A Fridley company's thin, flexible electronic displays could be the next big thing in credit-card fraud prevention.
Aveso recently secured a
$1.04 million investment that will finance the company through the end of the year. By then, it's hoping some of the world's largest credit card companies will have signed on as customers of its credit-card product, Primero.
The product is a printed, blue-and-yellow electronic display that can be affixed to the front of a card. Aveso sees a big potential market for
one-time passwords, which unlike regular credit card security codes could continually change.
"This is the next level of security authentication, by having the display on the card," says Nick Wood, Aveso's chairman of the board.
Aveso was spun out of Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich., in 2004. Its founder decided to set up the company in Fridley.
Earlier versions of the display couldn't withstand the heat and stress that credit cards are subjected to, but Aveso has figured out how to make the technology more durable.
Most credit-card fraud occurs when the card is not present, says Wood. The credit-card industry has already started using one-time passwords, but they're currently displayed on a separate keychain device.
Wood says he believes Aveso's product is going to be a disruptive technology. Two of the world's largest credit-card companies are evaluating the technology, and the product now meets the industry's quality standards, says Wood.
The company expects to ship between 50,000 and 100,000 units this year, mostly trials, he says, and probably 3 million next year. It is projecting that it will be profitable in 2012.
Source: Nick Wood, Aveso
Writer:
Dan Haugen