Use Your Driver's License as a Debit Card

Via BusinessWeek.com -

Aurora Bisig is a big believer in retailer discount cards. At her last count, she had a dozen—from Sam's Club (WMT) to nearly every grocery store in Central Texas. So this March, when the Austin (Tex.) insurance agent pulled into a gas station for a fill-up and saw a sign promising an additional 10¢ off per gallon for signing up with a new e-payment program, she was interested.

She was also pleased to learn that the "RollbackPrice" program wouldn't require her to add another piece of plastic to her overstuffed wallet. Instead, after entering her driver's license number and bank account information online with a two-year-old company called National Payment Card (NPC), she'd be able to pay for gas just by swiping her driver's license (linked directly, via the existing magnetic stripe, to her bank account), and entering a personal identification number.

Gas-station owners are pleased with the program too. Because NPC processes the payment as an e-check with the Automated Clearing House (ACH), a network most commonly used for direct deposits, participating retailers bypass credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard (MA)—and their processing fees (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/13/07, "Steve Case Takes On the Credit Card Giants").

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In Texas, a spokeswoman for the state's Public Safety Dept. issued a statement advising that consumers use caution when providing any retailer with their driver's license number, and emphasized that DPS does not endorse National Payment Card or any other programs that piggyback on state-issued drivers' licenses.

National Payment Card, for its part, says its stringent security measures make the likelihood of fraud or identity theft very low. Customers' financial information is not stored anywhere on the actual license, and withdrawals are not permitted after more than three failed PIN attempts. The system also sets a maximum weekly limit of $300 in withdrawals, though Randazza says in the case of fraud, customers would only be responsible for the first $50 of that.

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You can't exactly void your Driver's License Number if you lose it....and forget about expiration dates. Once its stored in the database, errrr I mean "patent-pending technology"...it is there.

Is this "patent-pending technology" at least encrypted??

I wonder what NPC thinks about PCI.....

NPC is headquartered in FL, but the pilot is here in Texas...hence the label.