Credit Cards With Chips Hit Market

[george]

Credit cards with chips hit market

BANGKOK: -- Two of Thailand's largest banks have moved forward with the launch of new chip-embedded credit cards, a new technology that issuers says will give card users greater protection against fraud and counterfeiting.

Bangkok Bank introduced its BBL-TAT chip card in May in a co-branding initiative with the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Kasikornbank, meanwhile, yesterday announced the launch of its Ideal chip card, with 40,000 cards expected to be issued by the end of the year.

The new EMV cards are a joint initiative by Europay, MasterCard and Visa to offer greater security and information storage on cards using embedded chips when compared with a normal magnetic strip.

Shoke Na Ranong, the credit card division manager at Bangkok Bank, said the bank would issue its new EMV chip cards soon, which are more secure and can be used to provide more benefits than the old plastic cards.

''Each EMV chip card can store information 20 times more than a normal credit card. This means the chip cards have information such as benefits and discounts for cardholders, and can be used for loyalty programmes in the future as well,'' he said.

The EMV chip cards will provide additional security for cardholders because they have multi-layer encryption and are also more difficult to duplicate.

According to a study of Visa International, it is estimated that chip cards could reduce counterfeiting by at least 70% and since the introduction of EMV cards in Malaysia last year, fraud has fallen to a five-year low.

Mr Shoke said BBL was now upgrading its credit-card terminals in retail outlets to prepare for the new era of chip cards. The bank has the largest Electronic Data Capture (EDC) terminal network throughout the nation.

Krisada Lamsam, a KBANK first senior vice-president, said all existing credit cards issued by the bank would be replaced by chip cards over the next two years, with 40,000 Ideal cards expected to be issued by the end of this year. The new cards cost around 130 baht to produce compared to the 25 baht of the conventional magnetic-strip cards.

''We expect to have 62 merchants with more than 100 outlets to join us and accept the payment by the Ideal card by the end of third quarter this year,'' he said.

Kbank has already installed 2,100 EDC terminals to facilitate the chip cards and the number will reach 7,000 by the end of the year.

--Bangkok Post 2005-07-20

[yeti]

Two of Thailand's largest banks have moved forward with the launch of new chip-embedded credit cards, a new technology that issuers says will give card users greater protection against fraud and counterfeiting.

A new technology ?

I've had a credit card for more than 10 years already, and it always had a chip on it

After all chips for credit card, sim card and so on have been invented only 30 years ago, that's a brand new technology

[astral]

OH SH*T.

Now I have to remember the PIN numbers for my credit cards as will as my ATM account.

Do the shop keepers have the machines to handle the cards?