Banks Rush to Beat April 1 Deadline on EMV

Nigerian banks are making last minute efforts to avoid Central Bank of Nigeria’s big stick for non compliance to the directive to upgrade their electronic payment channel to European MasterCard and Visa (EMV) by April 1, 2009, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.
Only eight banks - Zenith, UBA, First Bank, Diamond, Skye, Access, Standard Chartered and Intercontinental Bank Plc have met with the directive as their Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) now accept chip and pin EMV standard.
Central Bank of Nigeria had last year directed banks and switching companies to upgrade their technology to accept European MasterCard and Visa compliant chip cards by December last year, basically because of its security features.
The deadline was extended to April 1 2009, as the process required for the upgrade involves huge investment by both the banks and merchants, which are required to upgrade their ATMs to accept chip cards as well as point of sale terminals to accept the chip based cards.
EMV smartcards offer improved security and anticopy protection and avoid a great deal of fraud which is being faced by magnetic stripe based cards.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that some of the banks yet to comply have besieged switching companies and technology vendors to either upgrade the software that drives their ATMs or sign on to the platform that is EMV complaint.
Staffs of the banks now also work longer hours in order to beat the deadline.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations revealed that most of the banks which ATMs are not EMV complaint are driving them with ‘Postilen Front End Processor’ (PFEP) software supplied to them by a technology vendor based in Lagos.
All ATMs deployed by banks can accept chip and pin cards; it is the software that drives them that is important for them to accept chip and pin based cards.
According to the directive, banks will from April 1 this year stop issuing magnetic stripe cards and replaced them with chip and pin cards with stronger security features.
Cardholders in the country lately have become targets of scammers who send them e-mails requesting them to compromise their card pin numbers for their them to work as their switching company is upgrading its system.