by Joseph Kenny | 04/8/09

Visa Credit Card Company has announced its plans to pursue a variety of security initiatives that go beyond those features offered by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard. According to one top executive, there are two primary initiatives being pursued to deal with payment card fraud that are being tested across the country.

Fifth Third Bank conducted trials of one security initiative. Using magnetic strip technology to generate a unique digital fingerprint for each card, the company hopes to use it to verify the digital identity of individual credit cards. The strip uses distinctive elements that may be recognized and used in the verification process.

Visa's chief enterprise risk officer, Ellen Richey elaborated on the technology during a recent security event hosted by the company. The bottom line is to stop the creation and use of counterfeit credit cards based on stolen payment card information.

The second initiative has been tested by OfficeMax. The approach makes use of a challenge-response technique at the point of sale. The whole program is meant to verify the viability of presenting consumers with a series of personalized questions in order to approve transactions. This information might include anything from the last four digits of their cell numbers or ZIP code to their area codes.

Dan Roeber, vice president and manager of merchant PCI compliance at Fifth Third went into more detail. He noted that there were approximately 1,000 card readers distributed to retailers that were not informed about the testing phase. These terminals would be equipped to read the magnetic stripe data and render a "DNA picture" of the card. This picture is then compared with information stored by the card issuer, during the authorization process.

Roeber added, "The thing I really like about this technology is that there are no key management issues."

This comment was in contrast to the use of end-to-end encryption for protecting cardholder data, which does involve some management issues.

According to William Van Orman, treasurer for OfficeMax, the retailer implemented its challenge-response process to about 1,000 of its locations across Illinois, Indiana and Florida. After its initial six-month period, Visa requested that the test project be extended an additional four months.

Orman reported said, "Overall we think it's a successful project."