SMART CARD TESTING STARTS
By Adnews Staff
A battle of the banks is shaping up in a quest to profit from the cashless society. The Bank of Nova Scotia, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Vancouver City Savings Credit Union and Montreal's Caisse Centrale Desjardins began test marketing a Visa Canada stored-value "smart" cash card this week. The companies are not saying yet when system is to be expanded to other markets. The Visa smart card will go head-to-head with the Mondex card, which was developed in Britain and will be tested by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Royal Bank in Guelph, Ont. next summer. Plans call for a national roll-out in 1997. An ad agency review is being held for the Mondex card and a short list is expected next week. Advertising for the Visa card will begin when it becomes available to the public. All the banks involved, plus Visa, will probably do advertising for the card. However, Vancity senior technology analyst Heather Fisher told Adnews this week that no decision has been made yet. A smart card contains a computer chip into which cash can be loaded electronically. When passed through a terminal at a place where a purchase is made, the amount of the transaction is transferred from the card to the merchant. Scotiabank and TD employees in Toronto are using the Visa card at company cafeterias and at a few stores in malls located beneath the banks' downtown office towers. Vancity is testing at two McDonald's restaurants, Starbucks coffee shops, Science World and in the city's subway system. Desjardins officials were unavailable for comment yesterday. The cards currently are disposable and have a stored value of $20 or $40. As the card is used, the exact amount of the purchase is deducted and the terminal displays the amount of value remaining. Next year the cards will be reusable and will be accepted at more retail outlets. In the future they will also likely be used for transactions at automatic banking machines, credit purchases and debit payments.