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Smart cards - the latest, greatest mousetrap for financial services five years ago - are back.
What's different? This time Visa U.S.A. is under the gun of competition from American Express, and the San Francisco-based credit card association is pushing chip-embedded smart cards as a secure way of buying over the Internet.
Applications still lag behind the hype the future ability to buy an airline ticket online, load it onto your smart card, check into your flight by inserting the card into a reader, and instantly update your frequent-flyer miles, for example. But Visa and smart card issuers insist a variety of smart card uses is around the corner.
"There's a lot of activity and support from a lot of fronts - from card issuers to Visa and MasterCard - to set up the network that allows smart cards to take off," said Alan Elias, spokesman for San Francisco -based Providian Financial Corp.
Smart move?
Providian, which launched a transparent-plastic smart card last year and this month unveiled a GetSmart.com-brand smart card, is upgrading from 8K to 32K chips in mid-June.
An ad campaign that Providian will...