The bank is trialling the technology with staff in Minneapolis, enabling participants to use their pre-paid payroll account cards to make purchases and enter their secure work location.

The card contains Inside Contactless' MicroPass 4006 platform, which consists of Visa's payWave application and Hid Global's contactless access technology.

US Bank says the combined identification, payments and access card could prove useful in sectors such as government, university, corporate, health care and transportation.

Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer, retail payment solutions, US Bank, says: "By working with our business partners, we have been able to bring several technologies together to simplify the end solution for the cardholder."

In the UK, Deloitte employees are piloting a corporate Visa Barclaycard that includes technology for generating one-time passwords that can be used to remotely access the company's IT system.