News

Pakistan's largest bank makes the switch to EMV

November 25, 2013

In a major step toward EMV migration in Pakistan, HBL, the country's largest bank, has started issuing EMV Visa debit cards. Technology provider TPS Pakistan has upgraded its IRIS switch to support acquiring of Visa on the bank's multi-vendor ATM network.

IRIS, a multi-channel enterprise switch, is fully compliant with EMV standards for card issuing and acquiring. Successful implementations have been carried out for card schemes including VISA and MasterCard.

IRIS currently manages the entire spectrum of delivery channels including multi-vendor ATMs, CDMs, Internet banking, mobile banking and phone banking.

"Migrating to chip cards is a major milestone for HBL as it protects our clients' data much more securely," said Faiq Sadiq, head of the payment services group at HBL. "This technology will boost confidence on usage of cards and increase market acceptability of chip-based payments." 

"TPS is proud to be the technology partner of HBL, the largest bank in Pakistan," said TPS CMO Shahzad Shahid. "The shift towards EMV by HBL shall not only give a more secure payment instrument to its customers but also set the direction for the banking industry in Pakistan."

Read more about EMV.