Visa Toys With Credit Card Displays

Visa International is experimenting with credit cards that include a small display screen where customers could view recent transactions and bank balances.

About 10 percent of Visa’s 1.2 billion credit and debit cards in use worldwide already have a built-in computer chip, and that proportion is growing rapidly, Arnold says. The chip can store information that could be displayed on a small screen running across the top of a card, in a position similar to the magnetic strip on the back of most cards today.

Visa expects to have produced working prototypes of the devices in about a year’s time, Arnold says, although with security and other technology issues still to be ironed out, it’s likely to be a few years before such cards become widely available. In addition, the LCD-like screens being used in early designs are too fragile for everyday use, Arnold says.

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