BDO encourages clients to shift to EMV-chip card

BDO Unibank is encouraging its retail clients who have yet to avail of the EMV-chip ATM debit card to obtain it immediately from their branch of account to earn the benefit of its fully EMV-certified ATM network.

BDO started to make the EMV-chip ATM debit cards available free of charge to its clients since the third quarter of 2016. However, to date, there is still a low figure of card pick-ups from the branches, which means a large number of clients are still using the magnetic stripe-only ATM debit cards.

For corporate or payroll clients, BDO will make the EMV-chip cards available at their respective HR offices by December 31, 2017.

“Making the shift to the EMV-chip ATM debit card is one way to protect the clients from electronic fraud. It has enhanced security features, which include among others, encryption locks and keys to authenticate the card and the cardholder's transaction, protecting card data from being compromised,” said the bank’s executive vice president and transaction banking head Edwin G. Reyes, adding, “We hope our customers would embrace this significant improvement being implemented by the entire banking industry.”

The EMV-chip ATM debit cards complement the almost 4,000 BDO ATMs nationwide which have already been made EMVcertified by the bank. BDO was the first bank in the industry to fully retrofit its ATM network to allow EMV-chip card transactions.

The regulatory requirement to shift to EMV or the Europay MasterCard Visa is part of the banking industry’s move to produce a more effective way of significantly reducing counterfeit fraud, skimming and other related attacks perpetrated in magnetic stripe payment cards.