The idea was to represent the virtual credit card in a form that was familiar, rather than reinvent the metaphor.
Early widget design
In Mid 2001, a company named Orbiscom began working with Citi to develop an "online virtual credit card." The idea was to present a credit card sized window on a computer screen, that would generate a one-time 16 digit credit card number to help people feel more comfortable with online purchasing. E-commerce was in it's infancy and many consumers were still nervous about online shopping.
This was about five years before on-screen "widgets." There was eventually two sets of designs. One as a Thick client, which was downloaded and worked as an application, and an online Thin client, which populated in an HTML window (which was not very elegant). The following designs represent the Thick client, for which there was not any border around the client. These were actually early Flash interfaces when it was still a Macromedia product.
Orbiscom was eventually acquired by MasterCard International.