Banks and other financial businesses are starting a trend. PayPal and several banks in Europe are offering single use passwords that give added security to the accounts held by customers. Tuesday, VeriSign and Innovative Card Technologies (ICT) announced that soon the protection offered by companies like PayPal would be available on credit cards and ATM cards.

ICT and VeriSign announced the deal that will make it easier than ever for financial services providers and retailers to issue and accept payment cards embedded with one-time-password (OTP) authentication to protect their online transactions from e-fraud. Companies that use VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) can now use the ICT DisplayCard, a new marter payment card with built-in identity authentication.

The ICT DisplayCard integrates the security of a one-time password token into a card the size of a standard credit or debit card. The push of a button on the back of the card triggers the display to show a password that will change with every transaction. During an online transaction, this number is entered into a user interface with other information (static PIN and/or login name) for several layers of authentication.

or businesses to inoculate themselves against online fraud, they must make it convenient for consumers to authenticate their identity with every transaction,?said Fran Rosch, vice president, Authentication Services, VeriSign. ntegrating the ICT DisplayCard with VIP gives our customers more protection than ever, offering the latest methods of authentication in form factors that accommodate the way consumers live.

Rosch also said that OTP technology is slow to take off here in the US because of the small, but often lost or broken, devices that consumers need to carry. Allowing the same security on the back of a card removed this block, and should allow the service to take off.

VeriSign and RSA Security have been long time fans of OTP technology. The main reason, is two form authentication is one of the better systems to combat Phishing, which often targets financial businesses.

According to the Associated Press, VeriSign will announce a major bank using its cards in May. They also said those cards would be compatible with services currently using OTP devices. The company already has agreements with eBay Inc, PayPal, Yahoo, and Charles Schwab to issue password-generating devices that use VeriSign technology.