Maybe you have one, maybe you know somebody that has one or maybe you’ve never heard of them before; whatever your situation, there is a new type of credit card technology amongst us and it’s something I think we should all be aware of.  It’s called the Emue card and, although a card that disappears when you spend too much money might seem like a good idea, Emue cards are not designed to bury their heads in the sand when you go overdrawn or any such cleverness.  In fact, despite the financial crushing many of us are receiving, the Emue card has little or nothing to do with helping people rebuild poor credit ratings or consolidate debt – as most “new” cards claim to do.

Instead, Emue cards are aimed at reducing credit card fraud – something that is rising during the depression.  Although the introduction of Chip and PIN technology helped reduce credit card crime in shops, the amount of card-not-present fraud (phone, internet and mail order fraud) has actually risen since the introduction of Chip and PIN; now making up over 50% of all credit card fraud, or over £324,000,000 in 2008 alone!  This is not surprising, given how easy it is to commit this kind of fraud; online and phone transactions simply required the buyer to enter the card number, expiry date, start date or issue number and the security code printed on the back of a card.  Obviously anybody in possession of any card can find this information within seconds and the card it to buy anything - irrelevant of whether they are the legal card owner or not.

The idea behind Emu cards is quite simple; they work in general just like normal credit or debit card except that they also require the user to enter a PIN code into the card - like a credit card terminal.  The Emu card, which is a battery-powered microcomputer, then creates and displays a different unique four-digit code every time it is used.  This code is then used during the transaction process, meaning that fraudsters cannot use the Emue card without knowing PIN code required to generate the code!  Trully a new age of credit card technology may have arrived!