Oberthur Card Systems has won a contract with Providian Financial Corporation for the provision of smart Visa cards in the United States. The bank issued its one millionth smart Visa card in June 2001.
The smart Visa card enables Visa financial institutions to combine the purchasing power of traditional payment cards with smart chip technology to offer added security to consumers.
Visa projects there will be about seven million 'smart Visa' cards in force by year's end among all of its current issuers.