More banks deactivating non-EMV ATM cards

More banks are set to deactivate old debit and credit cards that are not compliant with the Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) technology as the deadline set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) nears.

Gokongwei-led Robinsons Bank Corp. urged its clients to upgrade their old ATM cards to the new Robinsons Bank visa debit card on or before Nov. 6.

“All regular ATM cards will be deactivated after this period,” it said in an advisory.

The bank owned by taipan John Gokongwei said clients could enjoy improved protection against fraud, access to funds 24/7 worldwide, cashless shopping, and get latest deals and discounts.

On the other hand, Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. of tycoon George Ty said all non-EMV ATM cards could no longer be used starting Oct. 15.

“We highly encourage you to get the EMV chip-enabled card to enjoy worry-free banking and protect yourself against card fraud,” Metrobank said.

EMV is a global security standard for payment transactions that is more secure than a magnetic- stripe card wherein stored information is static and can be copied with relative ease and cloned by fraudsters.

All BSP supervised financial institutions were given until Jan. 1 to migrate to EMV technology in order to drastically reduce, if not totally eliminate, fraud due to card skimming and counterfeiting as it provides cardholders better protection from unauthorized access to their accounts.

The BSP’s Monetary Board recently issued the supplemental guidelines on the EMV migration requirement setting the hard deadline for compliance on June 30 next year.

Full compliance constitutes completion of all EMV-related activities from upgrading or enhancement of back-end processes and systems, ATM and point of sales terminals to the replacement of magnetic stripe credit as well as debit or prepaid cards, including distribution of EMV-compliant cards.