4,000 ATMs not EMV Compliant

A total of 3,908 Automated Teller Machines (ATM) deployed by banks and merchants across the country are yet to be upgraded to Europay MasterCard and Visa (EMV) standard, Nigeria Communications-Week can now reveal.
It was gathered that this figure presents 38 per cent of 10,284 ATMs deployed across e-payment networks in the country’s financial sector. This revelation is coming as the date given by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to banks to stop transaction on magnetic stripe cards expired.
This migration was completed in December, but some banks are still carrying out transactions on the magnetic stripe cards in defiant to the directive of CBN on that.
However, it would be recalled that the upgrade became necessary as the system has been infiltrated by fraudsters who send emails to unsuspecting ATM cardholders urging them to disclose their Personal Identification Number (Pin) upon the claim that switching companies are upgrading their systems.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that banks, merchants as well as ATMC who are major ATM deploying organizations in the sector may have invested N308.52billion about $205.7 million in purchase of these ATM at the cost of $20,000 per ATM.
The implications of the continuous existence of ATMs that are not EMV complaints is that such ATMs will cease to process transaction as there will be no magnetic stripe card to be used on them, which will force their owners to upgrade them. Moreover, this is yet to happen as Nigeria CommunicationsWeek recently revealed that some banks are still processing magnetic stripe cards weeks after it was supposed to be discarded.
Elsewhere Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that National Central Switch, the switching platform established by CBN to solve the problem of interoperability in the card switching system which went live in November, has began pilot interoperability switching transactions with banks on different switching platforms.
Some of the banks in the pilot scheme include Guarantee Trust Bank, Diamond Bank, Intercontinental Bank among others.
Electronic payment system in the country is under going transformation occasioned by central Bank of Nigeria directive to banks to migrate from the traditional magnetic stripe cards to EMV standard chip and Pin cards.