June 2018 deadline for migration to EMV tech

All banks and financial institutions supervised by the central bank have only one more year to comply with the EMV requirement, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Thursday.

Failure to comply on the deadline set on June 30, 2018 would subject banks and financial institutions to monetary sanctions provided under relevant provisions in the Manual of Regulations for Banks (MORB) and Manual of Regulations for Non-Bank Financial Institutions (MORNBFI), said the BSP in a statement.

The BSP Monetary Board recently issued supplemental guidelines on EMV migration that prescribed a hard deadline for compliance as well as penalties for non-compliance.

The BSP previously set the deadline for EMV migration at Jan. 1, 2017, but some banks could not comply. So it instead encouraged banks to intensify public awareness programs, as well as develop strategies to entice or force clients to replace their old cards with EMV cards, suggesting the deactivation of existing cards by certain dates, offering of rewards and freebies, and/or liability shift for skimming incidents.

In communicating with their clients, the BSP said banks should also relay information on the date when EMV cards are available as well as the procedures for replacing magnetic stripe cards and distributing EMV-compliant cards.

EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, which is considered the global standard for credit and debit payment cards based on chip card technology. The banking industry generally considers cards with EMV chips more secure than the traditional magnetic stripe payment cards. /