In a bid to boost the security of credit and debit cards, a French tech company has come up with a way of dynamically generating CVV codes that change every 40-60 minutes.
The company, Oberthur Technologies, have devised a way of inserting a miniature screen, lithium battery and processing chip into standard cards, located where you would usually find the CVV code printed. These components work together to randomly generate the CVV code, making fraudulent use of the card impossible for online or over-the-phone purchases.
“The hope here is that the dynamic CVV will severely cut down on fraud.” said Martin Ferenczi from Oberthur North America.
Provided that criminals are unable to decode the algorithm responsible for randomly generating CVV codes, cardholders will be fully protected from online card fraud, something that the industry has struggled to fully address since the rise in consumers turning to the web to make their purchases. However, the biggest challenge the company faces in getting their technology adopted is the cost, as cards embedded with their dynamic CVV technology will cost 50 times more to produce than magnetic strip cards and 10 times more than cards with chip-and-PIN.
So far no banks have signed up to the new dynamic security technology, however the firm is confident that they will be able to find early adopters who will implement their technology into their cards by as early as 2017.
