Page 28 - Sphere No.21 (Mar 2008)

R E T A I L
26 SPHERE

N A FEW SHORT YEARS from now, the latest
hi-tech gadget may well be a credit-card phone,
which will see goods and services ordered and
paid for with a few keystrokes. This, in theory, will
allow people to book an international flight, charg-
ing the payment to their credit card, downloading
the paperless tickets and checking in at the airport
with a mere wave of the phone.
The stuff of sci-fi? Not really. The technology to
put a credit-card chip in a cell phone already exists: all it needs
is for the banks and card schemes to decide that the public is
ready to embrace such a device.
Credit cards have become such a big part of everyday life that it
is hard to imagine aworldwhere everythingwas paid for by cash or
cheque. But as recently as two decades ago, cards were still some-
thing of a rarity for ordinary people; they were strongly associated
with comfortable wealth and an international jet-set lifestyle.
Their popularity began to grow just as Nigel Beatty entered
the cards business some 25 years ago; the Briton’s career has
been spent largely in the credit-card sector, most recently help-
ing to re-launch the ComPass Visa card in Hong Kong. Among
the card’s features are enhanced security – via a Europay Mas-
Credit cards,
once considered tools of
the very rich, are now
part of daily life
By Mark Graham
MAIN PHOTO: KAY YUEN
Shopping on-line is
very much part of
the modern credit
card experience.
terCard VISA (EMV) chip, rather than the old-style magnetic
strip – and various loyalty features.
Mr Beatty is something of a walking encyclopedia on the us-
age and history of credit cards and can pinpoint exactly when,
and why, the EMV chip became popular. The enhanced securi-
ty that EMV chips provide has cut fraud radically because chips
are difficult and expensive to counterfeit – a trend that led to
its adoption in other parts of Asia and the rest of the world.
The launch of the security-enhanced cards went down well
with the public, whose worries about their card being cloned,
or skimmed, were largely assuaged.
Anyone who travels overseas, for work or pleasure, knows
that it is virtually impossible to function without at least one
I
CREDIT
PLUS