Frequent travelers and people living and working abroad use credit cards more often than most people do. By restricting the use of a credit card within user-definable parameters could help to reduce their fraud potential. Although articles in the press have not yet mentioned this feature, it is quite feasible if the credit card associations take up on the idea. The original idea was that the new credit cards containing a chip would have enough storage space to contain user instructions.
Wired News reports that this will enable parents to restrict purchases that their children make on their cards. Businesses would be able to define authorized product categories or expense levels. This feature is only cost-effective if the card has a larger data capacity, as in the envisaged chip cards. The larger storage capacity needed, although technically feasible, was never utilized on the magnetic stripe cards.
Frequent travelers and people living and working abroad could optimize this feature by setting their personal maximum purchasing limits and excluding certain product categories. Stolen credit cards would thus become less useful for the criminal.
We must wait to see whether any personal privacy risks can be interpreted into this new plan, yet to be rolled out by the credit card companies.
