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Kenyan Central Bank sets EMV target deadline of Sept. 30

April 8, 2013

Commercial banks in Kenya will be expected to migrate from magnetic stripe to EMV smart chip for ATM, debit and credit cards by Sept. 30, 2013. Members of the Kenya Bankers Association agreed to the move in order to combat increasing fraud at the ATM.

The Kenyan banking industry will spend over Sh2 billion ($23.6 million) on the process, said a report by All Africa. The KBA does not have data on the exact number of cases of fraud and money lost as the result of card crimes.

According to the central bank, Kenya has 2,300 ATMs and 18,400 point-of-sale terminals supporting more than nine million ATM and debit cardholders in the country. Last year, the number of ATM, debit and credit cards increased by 6 percent. The value of ATM transactions surpassed Sh156 billion ($1.8 billion).

Read more about EMV.