BDO urges accountholders to upgrade to EMV cards

MANILA, Philippines — BDO Unibank Inc. reminded its clients to shift to debit cards embedded with Europay Mastercard Visa (EMV) chip to ensure wider protection against fraudulent activities usually carried out in electronic banking channels.

Edwin Reyes, executive vice president and transaction banking head at BDO, said clients who have yet to make the shift to immediately obtain their debit card with embedded EMV chip from their branch of account.

“The bank’s objective over time is to effect a holistic approach to protecting the clients’ accounts from fraud. But to achieve this, clients must obtain their EMV chip debit card which is now available at their branch of account free of charge,” he said.

Accompanying this initial step are the upgrade of ATMs and point-of-sale (PoS) terminals into EMV and the eventual deactivation of the magnetic stripe-only debit card.

Last month, BDO’s nearly 4,000 ATMs nationwide became EMV-certified, making it the first bank to fully retrofit its ATM network to allow EMV chip debit card transactions.

BDO started to make the EMV-chip debit card available to its clients as early as the third quarter of 2016.

For corporate or payroll clients, BDO said EMV-chip debit cards would be made available at their respective HR offices by Dec. 31.

EMV is a global security standard for payment transactions that is more secure than a magnetic- stripe card.

BDO has one of the largest distribution networks, with more than 1,100 operating branches and over 3,800 ATMs nationwide. It also has a full-service branch in Hong Kong as well as 26 overseas remittance and representative offices in Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has issued a memorandum giving banks until June 30 2018 to fully comply with the shift to the mandatory EMV technology.