The four major banks will issue Europay, MasterCard, Visa (EMV) chip cards in the first quarter of 2007, after delays pushed back the launch date of the technology.
"There have been delays; it was anticipated that the roll-out would take place at the end of 2006," says Cecilia de Almeida, head of media relations at Nedbank. "Although we were ready for the roll-out, some banks were not. As such, we agreed to launch EMV as an industry early in 2007."
De Almeida revealed that the technology is ready to go during this week's Banking Crime Awareness Conference, held in Sandton. The event was hosted by the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric), in partnership with the big four banks (Absa, First National Bank, Standard Bank and Nedbank) and the South African Police Service.
EMV chip cards will contribute to containing card fraud and card skimming, say the banks.
Nedbank and Standard Bank say costs incurred for the EMV chip cards will not be passed on to consumers, but Absa states a "minimal" cost will be levied at the expense of consumers. FNB says it is too early to talk about costs.
Although the industry is reluctant to comment on the cost of the roll-out, Standard Bank says it has spent over R100 million on EMV. Standard Bank says it has been ready to deploy EMV chip cards since last year.
"In the UK, debit and credit card fraud fell by almost a quarter during 2005 in the first full year of the new EMV chip and PIN technology," says Sabric CEO Gilbert Swats.
EMV cards, sometimes called "chip and PIN" cards, contain a microprocessor that allows information to be stored, and also allows small applets to be run on the cards. The card provides for encryption block ciphers, such as the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and Triple-DES, to authenticate the card.
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