Visa's smartcard plan is as sharp as a PIN

NEWS More secure and quicker electronic transactions - that's the promise being made by Visa of a retail smartcard initiative, unveiled at the CarteS 2001 show in Paris today. Visa has worked with Retail Logic (a retail technology specialist) and Streamline Merchant Services (a payment clearing organisation) to develop integrated chip and PIN technology. The project features a smartcard with an EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) compliant chip inside, and a PIN-based point-of-sale card reader. The announcement is a result of a Visa's chip incentive programme, which aims to promote the benefit of smartcards among retailers. The retail community has been anxious about the cost of deploying smartcard readers as well as the lack of product development.