MasterCard Shows Off High-Tech Credit Card With Keyboard And Display

Most of the credit cards we all have and use today are nothing but plain pieces of plastic with numbers. It appears that credit cards will be getting new tech soon with MasterCard showing off its new Display Card technology. The Display Card has all the features of your typical credit or debit card along with an integrated authentication token.

The authentication portion of the credit card includes a touch-sensitive keypad, and an LCD display integrated into the credit card. The point of that integrated display and keypad is to show a one-time password users can enter to make secure purchases. Other than that integrated keypad and display, the Display Card works like any other credit card or debit card.

While I've never had a transaction or used a bank that hands out separate authentication tokens for online banking services, apparently these separate authentication tokens aren't uncommon for certain transaction types. The idea with the Display Card is that banks would no longer have to hand out these separate authentication tokens. These authentication tokens are similar to the little dongles PayPal gave out in the past that offered a randomized one-time password to be used with transactions.

This might be the perfect debit card for PayPal to start handing out allowing users to ditch that dongle and still have the same security when making purchases using their card. Even more interesting than one-time passwords is that the Display Card can be expanded in the future to show the user their available card balance, the number of reward points, or recent transactions right on the credit card.

[via CNET]