ATM and POS transactions made safer with EMV chip-enabled debit cards

Nowadays, we like to do everything instantly. Hence, we have Instagram for quick taking and sharing of photos and videos online. We have instant noodles if we want a warm bowl of noodle soup. For our caffeine fix, there’s instant coffee. We can even instantly pay for purchases at retail outlets and stores using your debit card.

But as with any payment technology, ATM and debit cards — especially those equipped with the old magnetic stripe technology — are susceptible to security breaches that could enable thieves to steal information and money from your card.

To avoid these potential security breaches and make cashless payments even more secure and convenient for consumers, financial services providers Europay, Mastercard and Visa have devised a new technology that has now become the global standard for payment card transactions.

The EMV chip card technology — derived from the initials of Europay, Mastercard and Visa — offers better security features than the current magnetic stripe technology being used. These include encryption locks and keys that authenticate the card and the cardholder’s transaction as well as prevent counterfeit fraud, skimming and other related security breaches that led to data and financial theft.

While not a new payment technology — EMV chip-enabled cards have been the standard in Europe for more than a decade now — it was only in recent years that the Philippine banking and financial system has adopted it.

In 2016, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ordered all banks operating in the Philippines to migrate from the magnetic stripe to the EMV chip-enabled cards, with a deadline set for June 30, 2018. The order was a timely one since the magnetic stripe is already a 50-year-old technology and is no longer secure amid increasing sophistication by card fraudster in finding ways to infiltrate the card and steal information from it.

Migrating to the EMV chip-enabled card makes fraud activity harder since, unlike the magnetic strip, the EMV chip cannot be cloned. Plus, the personal identification number (PIN) and the cardholder’s signature at the back makes for an additional factor when authenticating transactions made with the card.

As such, apart from migrating to the new EMV chip-enabled cards, all banks operating in the Philippines are upgrading their existing ATM terminals to be able to read the new cards. According to BancNet, the sole interbank network in the country, out of the 20,153 ATM machines nationwide, 17,359 or 86.77 percent have already been certified as EMV chip-compliant as of December 31, 2017. The remaining ATMs are expected to have completed their shift by the June 2018 deadline.

Being that the new cards will be used for e-commerce, all banks operating in the country are also working with merchants to help them migrate to point-of-sale (POS) terminals that accept transactions using the new technology. In that way, cardholders can enjoy using their new EMV chip-enabled cards in the most number of retail outlets and payment terminals as possible.

And, because the new cards are capable of contactless payments, cardholders can also experience paying for purchases without inserting their cards in EMV readers or terminals. However, there are still few merchants that offer contactless payments but it is expected to grow in the coming years once the migration to the EMV system has been completed.

So, if your bank has already sent you communication informing you to pick up your EMV chip-enabled card, waste no time in picking it up immediately. With the new EMV chip-enabled cards, cardholders will get to enjoy the convenience of safer, cashless payments. Make that shift today and experience better, more secure transactions.