New Visa card designed to thwart counterfeiting

Visa International has launched a new card design with enhanced security features that makes forging more difficult, while providing member financial institutions with increased business opportunities.

“Visa has updated its card design with new security features that will improve the way the world pays. This is among our many initiatives to ensure that transactions are conducted at the highest level of security and to provide a reliable payment environment for our cardholders,” said Peter Maher, Visa Asia Pacific’s general manager for risk management.

Visa’s new design includes an innovative holographic magnetic stripe on the back of the card. This new security component combines the ‘easy to recognize-difficult to reproduce’ hologram with the functionality of the magnetic stripe, making the card more difficult for fraudsters to reproduce and easier for merchants to recognize. Visa has also enhanced the signature panel with a tamper-evident element and a ‘VOID’ pattern underneath to provide extra levels of security. International law enforcement agencies have endorsed the new holographic magnetic stripe. The new design supports the inclusion of the EMV chip, which has seen a significant uptake of over 35 million cards in Asia Pacific.

Cardholders will now find the three-digit security code (CVV2) easier to read when they shop online or over the telephone. Previously placed within the signature panel, CVV2 now sits in a separate box.

The new Visa card also allocates more surface area to member banks for their business or brand messages. Member banks will have more flexibility to make distinct, creative changes to the design, color, shape and layout of the Visa cards they issue.

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