I think EV Certificates will make a significant impact because users will immediately see a difference in their browser (the green address bar) without having to look for a small lock icon.

Whether you think EV Certificates are worth it or not, you can find the best deal on EV and standard SSL certificates at http://www.sslshopper.com

For users of existing versions of FireFox, VeriSign published an extension that adds the green bar indicating an Extended Validation SSL certificate from VeriSign, Thawte, or GeoTrust. It is available from the Mozilla Addons website here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4828

Verisign *already* a) charge a lot of money for their "standard' SSL certs (259 pounds + VAT for a year!) and b) already do a lot of validation of the organisation/company applying for said "standard" certs. The "Extended Validation" cert is a total con by Verisign - they do very little extra to justify an even higher cost for the cert and then get a bit set in the cert to say "turn the URL bar green" effectively.

I've been pestered by Verisign sales reps on the phone desperate to push this EV SSL and I just tell them it's a con-trick and they soon sheepishly end the phone conversion because they have no comeback - they simply cannot justify massively increasing the gouge level they already exert (remember that they are actually a worse monopoly in SSL-land than Microsoft are in OS-land!).

I've been switching as many of our company's secure certs to cheap versions (I use Servertastic, but there's many other ones out there) unless our clients insist on Verisign. 

BTW, the secure seal programme is another Verisign con - think about it, it's free advertising on your site for Verisign! It's why I make a point to tell Verisign that I never put their secure seal on our client sites because we've already paid enough to them and they're not freeloading ads off our sites as well.

Users can't even be bothered to check the existing padlock and SSL certificate info. Why should this "Extended Validation" stuff be any more successful?

If it's still online, after verisign confirmed it's fake, and said they were acting, I'm guessing that VISA/MASTER have a excellent position to reclaim money from stolen CC info past this date from verisign.