Credit Cards That Think They Are Gadgets

holy_calamity writes "Pittsburgh startup Dynamics Inc has unveiled gadget-like credit cards with buttons, lights and even displays built into the same space as a conventional card. One card has two buttons on the front, which, when pressed, rewrite the data on the card's magnetic stripe, allowing it to act as multiple bank or credit cards in one. Another has several buttons and a display in place of the card's number. Only after entering a PIN is the magnetic stripe populated and the full card number revealed, and after a short time both go blank again for security." I wonder how long it'll be until somebody builds onboard biometrics into one of these things.

Comments

Re:Erm

[oodaloop]

AS TFA points out, there are 16 million credit card readers out there. Instead of making them all RFID readers, just use the existing infrastructure. And this would potentially reduce the size of your wallet, not increase it, by allowing you to carry just one programmable card instead of many.

How about just universal chip&pin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know chip&pin isn't perfect, but it'd be a step in the right direction..

I just went on vacation and had no problem with my cards until the end, when someone cloned one of my cards and "swiped" it nearly ten days after I'd last used the card in that particular city.

Curiously the card was never out of my sight. They carried a machine to the table in restaurants and swipe on the spot, as is common in Europe.

Then, when my genius bank thought there might be fraud, they called me on my land line at home. This despite having told them my travel plans and they knew I wouldn't be home for another 24 hours. Since I didn't get back to them soon enough they let the fraudulent charges go through -- one of them for over $2000 -- and I had to deal with it the hard way when I got home.

Re:How about just universal chip&pin?

[Dog-Cow]

It's not uncommon. It's done to prevent charges at the destination from being rejected due to automated fraud prevention.

Re:I'm waiting for transaction-specific codes

[Mr_Silver]

Cards that will populate the mag-strip with transaction-specific codes each time. So you can type the code in, the guy at the restaurant can pick up the card with your ticket, and swipe it once.

It's called Dynamic Magstripe and is available now. One example of it is here.

In Europe, they are solving this problem by moving away from magstripe to chip-and-pin. This is for two reasons, you don't give your PIN out to anyone else and because the card never leaves your sight.

For example, when you pay for food at a restaurant, the server physically brings you the Point Of Sale terminal for you to insert your card, confirm the price and enter your PIN. This means that it's impossible for them to run off and make a copy of the card without you seeing it happen.

(I was in the US recently and did not like the fact that my credit card disappeared from my sight when I went to pay for the bill)