Fergie's Tech Blog

Payment-Card Companies Agree on Chip Standard

Moving through a store's checkout will soon become an entirely different process as a result of an agreement among the country's top payment-card suppliers to move to microchips.

In an announcement Monday, MasterCard, Interac and Visa announced an industry-wide drive to ensuring a smooth transition to chip technology, which eventually will make credit cards, as we know them, obsolete.

Chip-card technology, as it is called, are plastic cards with embedded computer chips, and their makers claim they provide the ultimate in protection against counterfeit and lost and stolen card fraud. The technology also offers merchants and cardholders greater convenience at the checkout line.

posted by Fergie @ 3/13/2006 12:27:00 PM