▲ ▼ Inexpensive, Accessible hardware security tokens
There is a rush to replace SMS based OTPs in several markets with more secure and reliable alternatives for multi-factor authentication due to the growing prevalence of SIM swapping attacks and reliability issues concerning SMS.
When compared to other authentication options, FIDO based hardware security key/tokens have proven to be reliable and private mechanism for secure multi-factor authentication. But hardware security token's prohibitive costs and accessibility friction have prevented widespread adoption.
Although app based TOTP is still a better alternative than SMS for two-factor authentication, it is still susceptible to phishing attacks and faces reliability concerns due to latency and not as accessible as SMS, Although HOTP fixes the latency issues with TOTP it still falls behind the accessibility of SMS.
USB flash drives embedded into credit card have been in existence for a while now - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=credit+card+flash+drive , integrating hardware token into it and delivering it as standard credit/debit card might address the accessibility issues to some extent as we're used to keeping our credit cards relatively safer than a separate hardware key fob.
I doubt whether these credit card 'shaped' USB flash drives are of same thickness as a normal credit card, if not then reducing the thickness of hardware key fob would drive the costs further up and thereby defeating the purpose entirely.
I have one of those credit card flash drives, the edge thickness are same as a normal credit card but the flash drive part in the middle bulges out a bit.
That would mean a hardware token key fob instead of that flash drive on an actual credit card would also be bulging, It would work fine with card swiping machines, perhaps even on machines where partial insertion of the card is required, but on machines which require entire card to be inserted it would be a no go.