Societe Generale is to offer customers the opportunity to replace their current Visa cards with a Motion Code card from Oberthur that replaces the three-figure CVV code on the rear of a card with a small screen display that automatically changes periodically.
The French bank is charging customers an annual $12 subscription to switch to the new cards, which are designed to strengthen the security of online transactions.
The cards come equipped with an e-paper screen, an NFC antenna and a mini-battery which is used to generate a random new CVV code every hour. If the card data gets stolen, it becomes useless in the next hour.
SocGen is rolling out the cards to retail customers in France holding a CB/VISA card (CB/VPAY, CB/Visa, CB/Visa Premier or CB/Visa Infinite) following a successful test among 500 customers.
Oberthur is expecting to make major inroads in the French banking market, which has been actively testing the technology over the past year. SocGen's move to issue the cards commercially comes just weeks after the technology received certification from the Cartes Bancaires group (CB), for conformance with French payments norms.