Visa CodeSure gets commercial green light

London, 2nd June 2010 – Following a string of bank pilots, Visa Europe has commercially launched its CodeSure system, which comprises a card with a display for generating one-time codes to authenticate online transactions. 

Visa Europe, Europe’s leading payment system, today announced a major step forward for online security. Following on from a number of consumer pilots and rigorous testing with European banks, Visa CodeSure is now fully available for commercial launch. By providing a Visa card with an alpha-numeric display, a 12-button keypad and battery embedded in the card, fraud online will be significantly further reduced. As the cardholder is required to enter their PIN for each online transaction, the Visa CodeSure card will prevent any unauthorised use. Visa CodeSure works on any Visa debit, credit, prepaid or commercial card.

Visa CodeSure provides multi-channel authentication technology in a single convenient Visa card for consumers. Visa Europe has approved its use in the following services:

• PIN generated one-time-passcode for Verified by Visa payments at participating merchants globally – without changes to merchant software or cardholders having to register and remember passwords
• PIN-generated one-time passcode for online banking access
• PIN-generated one-time passcode for telephone banking services
• Transaction signing for online banking services, using specific elements such as Account Reference Number or amount of transaction
• Access to third party services such as corporate virtual private networks (VPN) for commercial card users, or frequent flyer programmes and other online services

Since its development in 2009, Visa and its partner, Emue Technologies Pty Ltd., have undertaken extensive pilot trials with eight European banks and their cardholders in a number of countries including the UK, Italy, Israel, Turkey, Switzerland and Germany.

The pilots canvassed user opinion and found that participants felt they would use their cards for card-not-present transactions more often (70% positive) and were reassured about security with the new card (86% positive).

Sandra Alzetta, Head of Innovation at Visa Europe commented: “The banks and their cardholder trials have shown an appetite for innovation and the broadening of a payment card’s use. This exclusive Visa solution is an extremely convenient way to bring a similar level of security to payments online as we now enjoy on the high street with chip and PIN. The solution goes beyond just online and remote shopping but also allows organisations to use the card in place of other online log-in systems to access, for example, corporate virtual private networks (VPN).”

Visa has extensively tested the product’s durability, safety, reliability and security before enabling it for commercial launch. The Visa CodeSure card offers banks a solution to fulfil all of their multi-channel banking requirements. The use of PIN-generated one-time passcodes and using mutual authentication* technology, will provide banks with an attractive solution that enables security and convenience in the same device – a Visa payment card.

The process of validating the transaction is done in three simple steps:

1. When shopping online or logging in to an online banking service, the cardholder activates the authentication process by pressing the “Verified by Visa” option button on the card’s keypad
2. When prompted the consumer inputs their PIN into the keypad embedded in the card
3. A unique one-time-passcode appears on the card’s display, which is then used by the cardholder to authenticate a normal Verified by Visa transaction.

Mutual authentication enables both parties in a transaction to be mutually authenticated online or over the telephone, e.g.

• When accessing their online bank, a cardholder would be provided a dynamic numeric challenge code (a number) from the bank
• The challenge code would be entered into the Visa CodeSure card by the cardholder, to confirm it is a request from their bank
• Only when the challenge code has been entered and correctly verified and approved is the cardholder then prompted to enter their PIN into the card
• This subsequently creates a unique one-time passcode for access to the online banking with both parties being mutually reassured.

The same steps would apply if conducting a transaction over the phone using Visa CodeSure.