MBNA, a Bank of America company in the UK, Cornèr Bank in Switzerland, Cal in Israel and IW Bank in Italy will each begin pilot trials of the new card over the next few months.

The Visa PIN card features an alpha-numeric display and a 12-button keypad built into the back of a conventional credit, debit or prepaid card. The card, developed using technology from Australia-based Emue technologies, promises a three-year battery life, overcoming a potential stumbling block to such schemes in the past.

When used with Verified by Visa (VbV) the consumer would not need to register or remember usernames and passwords, instead they would enter their PIN into the card which creates a unique code for a specific purchase or transaction.

Sandra Alzetta, SVP, head of innovation and new products at Visa Europe, comments: "The interest in this solution in the industry has been overwhelming and we look forward to working with the banks involved in the pilots to gain greater insights into how effective this solution can be in the longer term."

In Switzerland, Cornèr Bank will issue the first cards to 500 VbV subscribers.

Alessandro Seralvo, director at Cornèrcard comments: "Authentication is an important functionality we make available to our cardholders for the card-not-present world. Our philosophy is to offer a variety of authentication solutions, leaving each cardholder the possibility to select their preferred solution. The Visa one-time code card fully responds to this philosophy."

The Verified by Visa scheme and MasterCard SecureCode programme have so far done little to inspire confidence in consumers about the safety of their card details when shopping online. Visa has promised to combat the criticism and plans to introduce a new user interface that keeps the cardholder on the merchant Web site during the authentication process, rather than redirecting users to a confusing new pop-up page for authentication. Pilots of the new process are under development and will be followed by a wider launch in 2009, says Visa.