NEW YORK (AP) — Your wallet could soon get thinner.
Visa announced major changes Wednesday to how credit and debit cards will work in the United States in the coming months and years.
These new features could mean Americans will carry fewer physical cards in their wallets and make the 16-digit credit or debit card number printed on each card increasingly unnecessary.
The changes will be among the biggest in how people pay in the United States since the country introduced chip cards several years ago. They also come as Americans have many more options for paying for purchases beyond “credit or debit,” including deferred payment companies, peer-to-peer payment options, paying directly at a bank or digital payment systems like Apple Pay.
“I think (with these features) we’re moving beyond the point where consumers may never need to manually enter an account number again,” Mark Nelsen, Visa’s global head of consumer payments, said in an interview.
The biggest change coming to Americans will be the ability for banks to issue a physical payment card that will be connected to multiple bank accounts. This means that it will no longer be necessary to carry, for example, a Bank of America card or Chase debit card and their respective credit cards in a physical wallet. Americans will be able to set criteria with their bank, such as applying all purchases under $100 or made at a certain merchant to the debit card, while other purchases will be made with the credit card.
The feature, already in use in Asia, will be available this summer. Affirm, the buy-now, pay-later online payments company, is the first Visa customer to roll out the feature in the United States.
Some of Visa’s new features are aimed at combating online payment fraud, which continues to rise as more countries embrace digital payments. The San Francisco-based company estimates that payment fraud occurs about seven times more often online than in person, and that billions of stolen credit and debit card numbers are now available to criminals.
Other new features also address features that payment companies have rolled out in recent years. The Apple Card, which uses Mastercard as its payment network, does not come with a printed 16-digit account number, and Apple Card users can request a new credit card number at any time without having to get rid of the physical card.
Visa executives see a future in which banks will issue cards whose 16-digit account numbers, if the new cards come with them, will be largely symbolic.
Other new features unveiled by Visa include changes to its tap-to-pay payment features. Americans will now be able to tap their credit or debit card on their smartphone to add it to their mobile wallet, instead of using their smartphone’s camera to scan the card information, or tap the card on their smartphone to approve an online transaction. Visa will also begin implementing biometrics to approve transactions, similar to how Apple devices use a fingerprint or facial scan to approve transactions.
It will take time for these new features to be implemented by banks, who will decide when and what features to implement for their customers. But since banks and credit card companies are Visa customers and issue cards bearing the Visa label, these features are in demand by financial institutions.