Visa And Mastercard May Go On The One Card
The Age
Thursday August 21, 1997
The credit-card rivals Visa and MasterCard are likely to find themselves uncomfortably close within a few years - the newly appointed Australian chief executive of Mondex, Mr Don Gregg, says they will be on the same card.
Mr Gregg said yesterday Visa would come under increasing pressure from its issuing banks to allow its credit function to be included on Mondex's dynamic multi-application smart card, MULTOS.
Mondex, which is billed as a replacement for cash, with a stored-value function on a chip embedded in a standard plastic card, is owned in Australia by the four big banks.
The stored-value system, together with several other functions including debit, credit, loyalty programs, airline ticketing and health records, can be housed on the MULTOS chip. Visa is marketing its own system built around the Java programming language.
Mr Gregg said there were no technical hurdles to Visa's inclusion in the MULTOS system. MULTOS has been developed by Mondex and its 51 per cent-owner, MasterCard, with several big names in the technology industry.
MasterCard's head of operations for Australasia, Mr Trevor Whitworth, supported Mr Gregg's stand, saying the group saw Mondex as the global standard for electronic cash and MULTOS as the global operating system.
"Visa would be welcome to offer its applications using the system," he said.
However, Visa's vice-president for Australia and New Zealand, Mr Hilton Sack, rejected any suggestion that it would link up with MULTOS.
'It's all a lot of vapor," he said.
"It's highly unlikely that we would allow that, any more than we would allow MasterCard on to a Visa product."
Mr Gregg also said if the Australian banks were happy to accommodate the function there was no obstacle to charge-card issuers such as American Express and Diners Club getting a slot on the MULTOS chip.
Amex in particular is keen to get Australian banks issuing its cards, and has signalled several times that it is negotiating with a number of organisations - much to the chagrin of Visa, which has pointed out dangers in banks issuing cards from a non-bank-owned organisation.
© 1997 The Age
