Things To Come: One Card Connected To Multiple Banks. Replaces Numbers With Digital ID Verification, AI Will Learn Purchases

VISA Introduces The ‘One Card To Rule Them All,’ One Card Connected To Multiple Banks. Replaces Numbers With Digital ID Verification, AI Will Learn Purchases

Jacob M. Thompson

“But some things are uniquely you. Your face, your fingerprint, your biometrics are yours and yours alone. And they’re the key to the next generation of security in payments,” Visa says.

Earlier this month international financing giant Visa announced they will be offering a service that allows customers to connect a number of banks and money accounts in just a singular card. 

In a press release published last week, “Visa Flexible Credential” was announced, touted as “a new technology that lets issuers give their clients the ability to access different funding sources on an existing payment card.” Normally each account requires its own individual card, but now no longer will Visa customers need to carry “around a small stack of plastic,” the company says.

Visa boasts it will enable “one card to rule them all” – “virtual or otherwise,” they state.

Visa Flexible Credential — a new technology that lets issuers give their clients the ability to access different funding sources on an existing payment card — is already letting consumers do exactly that.

From line of credit or checking account, to loyalty points, prepaid debit or installments, some shoppers — and in the near future, all shoppers whose issuers enable the technology — are living in the future of payments, where one card can tap into different types of funding sources.

According to one of Visa’s studies, ‘51% of card users want the power to access multiple accounts and funding sources through a single credential.’ Visa will begin launching pilot programs later this year for their Flexible Credential, though the program is already up and running in some parts of the world with $3 billion already through their pilot network.

On the same day Visa also announced that the future of these cards will remove the unique serial numbers on the card, but instead with biometric data in a digital ID verification system.

The thing is, card numbers don’t prove that you’re you — they just prove that someone, somewhere, possesses a string of numbers.

But some things are uniquely you. Your face, your fingerprint, your biometrics are yours and yours alone. And they’re the key to the next generation of security in payments.

The company will be introducing the Visa Payment Passkey Service, “a new take on digital payments identity,” the say. Visa explains that “a modern fraud detection system” – powered by AI, in other words – will learn to recognize the customer’s purchase history, and if it detects a purchase it registers as obscure the transaction will be frozen.

Visa Payment Passkey Service binds your account credential with your device, enabling you to use the biometrics you use to unlock your device for payment authentication. Enroll once via checkout (or your mobile banking app, in the future) and then pay with a smile, everywhere Visa is accepted online, across any device or online surface. No need to worry about passcodes or authenticator apps for each checkout experience.

Under the hood, we’ve built our own Fast Identity Online (FIDO) server, enabling Visa to authenticate and verify customer identities. Where other approaches require the issuer or merchant to complete at least part of their own authentication, Visa’s federated model shoulders that entire burden. If you’re a merchant, just integrate Visa Payment Passkey Service once and let Visa handle the rest—no need to build your own server, integrate it into your tech stack, or get issuers onboard.  

At the end of the day, relying on biometric markers for payments helps make the whole chain more convenient and more secure. More and more, the future of commerce has you at the center.

Lastly, VISA also noted that “the end of swipe and type” transactions are here, and instead basically going all in on the “tap to pay” model that has already been widely adopted around the world, where customers simply tap their card, phone, or wearable on a terminal to perform the transaction.