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Smart Cards

Since their introduction in the 1960s, payment cards have changed the way people conduct their finances, their travel, and their work. Whether used for credit or debit, while traveling or at home, at the point of sale or at an ATM, it is difficult to imagine the world without the convenience and safety that payment cards bring to an ever-expanding range of financial transactions. Now, Visa is working with its Member financial institutions and technology providers to ensure that this global payment service continues to evolve to meet customers' needs well into the next millennium.

Visa continues to support Members' products and services by finding new ways to reduce fraud, gain operational efficiencies, and expand card utility and usage. Multifunction smart cards used both in the physical world and increasingly on the internet represent the next step in this ongoing development process.

Multifunction smart cards will fundamentally enhance the way credit and debit transactions are conducted. By opening unique new product and service opportunities, including electronic commerce, smart cards will help protect banks' payment franchise from non-bank competitors. In order to achieve these benefits in the most cost effective way, Visa is working with its Members to adapt the necessary card acceptance infrastructure.

Visa has developed a comprehensive approach for incorporating current and emerging technologies into the acceptance infrastructure to ensure global acceptance and interoperability of Visa products. This approach includes supporting Members' programs in the following efforts:

			Promote standards and specifications that ensure global interoperability of Visa card products.
			Provide Visa-specific requirements and guidelines for vendors and merchants.
			Develop card acceptance device deployment programs that:
			Establish mutually-beneficial working relationships with vendors.
			Advance the migration of an acceptance environment capable of supporting chip-based products and services.

In cooperation with leading vendors, specific minimum guidelines for card acceptance devices that incorporate Visa's technical and business requirements have been established. To support smart card programs on a global basis, card acceptance devices should at a minimum:

			Contain a magnetic stripe reader and a chip card reader conforming to the EMV specification.
			Meet the requirements of EMV and the Visa Integrated Circuit Card Specification (VIS), Visa's interpretation of EMV for credit and debit applications.
			Support Static Data Authentication (SDA) for protection against counterfeit cards.

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