News

7,000 South African ATMs need to be upgraded for EMV

August 17, 2004

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South African banks are upgrading their ATMs and merchant point-of-sale terminals to accommodate the EMV (Europay/MasterCard/Visa) international standard for chip-based cards, which will take effect in South Africa in January 2005.

About 7,000 ATMs will need to be upgraded so that they can read information stored in a chip embedded in the new cards, as well as about 130,000 merchant terminals and point-of-sale systems, according to a report in Business Day.

There are an estimated 4 million credit cards and about 12 million debit cards in use in South Africa, all of which need to be migrated to the new standard, said Gary Byrne, regional manager for MasterCard.

Card issuers, usually the banks, will be able to issue a single card for multiple purposes, Byrne said. Digital signatures and authentication certificates that can be used to conduct Internet transactions can be stored on the new cards, for instance.

"As it stands, one card is much the same as another, but in the future the banks could form agreements with suppliers to incorporate their loyalty schemes and other services, so that a customer only needs to carry one card," Byrne said.

Like the UK, South Africa is also introducing PIN at the point-of-sale with its chip cards to add another level of security to transactions, according to the Business Day report.