Standard Chartered replaces magnetic stripe cards with chip cards

Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria has reinstated  its commitment to providing highly secure electronic payment solutions to its customers in Nigeria.

To that extent, the Bank has called on its customers to come and exchange their magnetic stip cards.
Commenting on the need to change the chip cards, Mrs Ijeoma Anusionwu, the Value Centre General Manager_Consumer Transaction Banking/Wealth Management advised customers of the Bank to come in and exchange their magnetic stripe Moneylink and Visa cards for Chip cards before the end of August as the Bank will disable the magnetic stripe cards after the 31st of August 2010.

She explained that the chip enabled cards are the next level of security for the payments infrastructure. According to her, “ chip enabled debit cards will require the use of a PIN (Personal Identification Number) to consummate transactions at both ATMs and POS terminals. Benefits of the Chip card to our customers are many. Chip cards and chip terminals help make our secure transaction system even more secure by validating the cardholder’s Chip & PIN.

This enhances the security of your card whenever you use it in a face_to_face transaction. Also because the Personal Identification Number (PIN) replaces the signature, the transaction is more secure.

You insert your Visa card in a chip terminal and enter your PIN when prompted. Once your PIN is confirmed and the purchase is approved, you.ll be prompted to remove your card from the terminal. You do not hand your Visa card to anyone, or lose sight of it at any time.

“This helps to prevent fraudulent use of your card. Chip cards also provide increased security against counterfeiting and skimming, as the chip technology virtually eliminates the ability to copy the contents of the chip to another card.

Thanks to EMV chip technology. With our new chip cards, our cardholders can expect enhanced security and protection from fraud, greater transaction speed, convenience, and ease of use.”

It would be recalled that the process of  replacing the Bank’s  magnetic stripe cards with chip cards commenced in November 2009.

As a result, all cards now issued by the Bank are chip based cards and they include the Vpay, Visa Electron, Visa Gold, Visa Platinum, Visa Infinite and Visa Business debit cards.

To encourage the immediate adoption of the chip cards, the Bank ran a promo to reward its customers who exchanged their magnetic stripe cards for chip cards between November 2009 and March 2010 by entering them into a draw to win a Brand new Toyota Corolla car on offer. At the end of the promotion, a winner was selected in the draw . Mr. Jonathan Okehs, a customer with the Wuse II branch in Abuja.

Speaking at the presentation of the Car in Lagos recently, the customer said , “ I am truly glad to have been selected as the winner of the car in this promotion. I have been a customer of Standard Chartered since 2004 and have never been disappointed by their cards during my various trips to countries around the world.”