News

Level Four tackles EMV migration in Asia

April 21, 2005

LONDON - Level Four Software is expanding globally through a distribution deal with Makeena Corp. that will give Asia-Pacific customers access to leading ATM and POS testing and development software, according to a news release.

Malaysia-based Makeena delivers payment solutions and system integration for customers throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Its operations provide sales and services to customers in Australia, Brunei, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Through the agreement, Makeena becomes a third-party distributor of Level Four's ATM Channel Development Suite.

Banks in Asia Pacific are shifting their ATM and POS networks to meet the requirements of the Europay/MasterCard/Visa standard before the January 2006 deadline. While EMV migration across Asia Pacific is at various stages, fraud prevention is a common and primary driver for all countries to meet the industry standard, which will enhance card security.

Credit card fraud in Malaysia, one of the region's early adopters of EMV, topped RM 100 million (U.S. $45 million) in the first half of 2004, according to the Agency for Combating Trade-Related Crimes. Credit card fraud losses in Australia fell by 8 percent in 2003 (Datamonitor), but 50 percent of that fraud resulting from skimming magnetic-stripe information. Banks in South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong also have lost heavily to counterfeiters.

"EMV implementation in Asia Pacific will speed up once early adopters such as Malaysia demonstrate how the technology can be used," said Martin Macmillan, Level Four chief executive. "Although smart card infrastructure can be expensive, smart cards significantly help reduce fraud and enable banks to deliver new applications to their customers' chip cards in an efficient and cost-effective way. But the added complexities of EMV require banks to test their ATM and POS networks extensively before deployment, to ensure that their customers experience a smooth migration from magnetic-stripe to chip cards."

Under the agreement, Makeena will distribute, install and support key components of Level Four's ATM Channel Development Suite, including ATM Simulator, ATM Reporter, ATM Developer and key plug-ins like EMV FastTrack and Triple-DES FastTrack.