NEW YORK (AP) — Your wallet may soon be running thin.
Visa announced Wednesday that it will make major changes to the way it operates credit and debit cards in the United States in the coming months and years.
This new feature means Americans will carry fewer physical cards in their wallets and the 16-digit credit and debit card numbers printed on every card will become increasingly irrelevant. there is a possibility.
These would be some of the biggest changes to how payments work in the United States since the country introduced chip-embedded cards several years ago. It also explores ways Americans can move beyond “credit or debit” to pay for purchases, including buy now, pay later companies, peer-to-peer payment options, direct payments at banks, or digital payment systems like Apple Pay. It also helps that there are more options available.
“I think[with these features]we are getting past the point where consumers will never have to manually enter their account number again,” Marc Nelsen, Visa’s global head of consumer payments, said in an interview. Ta.
The biggest change for Americans is that banks will now be able to issue one physical payment card that can be connected to multiple bank accounts. This means you no longer need to carry around your Bank of America or Chase debit card or their respective credit cards in a physical wallet, for example. Americans will be able to set standards for their banks. For example, you can set conditions such as requiring all purchases to be less than $100, or requiring purchases at certain merchants to be made with a debit card and other purchases made with a credit card.
This feature is already in use in Asia and will be available this summer. Buy now, pay later company Affirm is the first Visa customer to roll out this feature in the United States.
Some of Visa’s new features are in response to online payment fraud, which continues to rise as more countries adopt digital payments. The San Francisco-based company notes that online payment fraud occurs approximately seven times more frequently than in-person, and that billions of stolen credit and debit card numbers are now available to criminals. We estimate that it is available.
Other new elements also respond to features that non-payments companies have rolled out in recent years. Apple Card, which uses Mastercard as its payment network, does not come with a printed 16-digit account number, and Apple Card users can request a new credit card number at any time without getting rid of their physical card. Masu.
Visa executives predict that banks will issue cards where the 16-digit account number is largely symbolic if it comes with the new cards.
Other updates announced by Visa include changes to the tap-to-pay feature. Instead of using their smartphone’s camera to scan card information or tapping a card to their smartphone to authorize online transactions, Americans are now tapping their credit or debit card into their smartphone and using their mobile wallet. You will be able to add cards to. Visa will also begin implementing biometric authentication to authorize transactions, similar to how Apple devices use fingerprints and facial scans to authorize transactions.
It will take time for the features to be narrowed down to banks, who will decide what and when to implement it for their customers. But these are features that financial institutions were looking for because banks and credit card companies are Visa customers and issue cards with Visa labels.
