Interoperability issues hamper shift to EMV

MANILA, Philippines - Interoperability issues continued to hamper the ongoing shift to the mandatory Europay-Mastercard-Visa (EMV) technology despite the reminder issued by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to banks to ensure smooth transition.

Cardholders of various banks are up in arms as they experience difficulty transacting in the automated teller machines (ATMs) owned by other banks.

The interoperability issues affect cardholders of EMV-equipped ATM cards equipped who fail to withdraw from machines that are not owned by banks where they have existing accounts.

EMV is a global security standard for payment transactions. It ensures interoperability between chip cards and devices that accept these cards.

An EMV chip card is therefore more secure than a magnetic- stripe card wherein stored information is static and can be copied with relative ease and cloned by fraudsters.

The BSP mandated banks to shift to the 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.

All BSP supervised financial institutions were given until Jan. 1 to migrate to EMV technology all debit, prepaid and credit cards, ATMs, POS terminals, and other similar devices and underlying payment platforms and applications.

However, the shift to the EMV technology among financial institutions were not synchronized thereby resulting to interoperability issues particularly with regards to chip and PIN or chip and signature transactions.

BSP Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. earlier reminded banks to adopt handling support for magnetic stripe transactions pending full compliance with the EMV migration requirement.

“In this regard, all concerned BSP-Supervised Financial Institutions should ensure that the requirements can be adequately fulfilled so that consumers will not be disenfranchised while transition to EMV technology is ongoing,” he said.

Furthermore, several banks have yet to comply with the EMV certification of Bancnet that covers the banks’ host systems, ATMs, and chip cards.

The tests and certification of host systems are done at Bancnet while the tests and certifications of ATMs and chip cards are done at the laboratories of world’s leading EMV migration service provider FIME.

Bancnet said interoperability issues affect banks with non-certified chip cards and ATMs.

Former Bank Marketing Association of the Philippines president Allan Tumbaga of East West Banking Corp. urged cardholders to transact in the ATMs of their own banks while the perceived issues are being addressed.