BSP sets June as deadline for EMV card migration

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu Bankers Club (CBC) is calling on all ATM (automated teller machine) holders to change their old cards to EMV cards, otherwise they will not be able to use them after June 2018.

EMV is a global standard for credit and debit payment cards based on chip card technology taking its name from the card schemes Europay, MasterCard, and Visa - the original card schemes that developed it.

"Clients who cannot convert their cards to EMV may not be able to transact with the ATMs," said CBC president Fritz Palileo.

Although most banks' ATMs have been EMV ready, there are still clients who have yet to convert their old cards to new ones.

Cards with EMV chips were deemed more secure than the traditional magnetic stripe payment cards.

The Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (BSP) has given the BSP-supervised financial institutions until June 30, 2018 to fully comply with the EMV requirement. Failure to do so will subject BSP-supervised financial institutions to monetary sanctions provided under the relevant provisions in the Manual Regulations for banks and regulations for non-bank financial institutions.

According to Palileo, CBC will also assess the compliance of member banks during its general membership member set in the third week of this month.

BSP has ordered banks to issue all customers with EMV chip-enabled cards until June 30, 2018 or face penalty.

The BSP also urged banks to ramp up information dissemination on the process of replacing the magnetic stripe cards with EMV cards.

It likewise ordered the banks to raise awareness as well as manage customers’ expectations on the replacement of their payment cards.

BSP-supervised financial institutions should intensify their public awareness programs leveraging on all available communication channels. The information should clearly indicate the date when EMV cards are available and ready for pick-up by their clients as well as the related procedures for replacing magnetic stripe cards and distributing EMV-compliant cards.

BSP-supervised financial institutions are further expected to develop strategies to entice or force clients to replace their old cards with EMV cards (in effect, deactivation of existing cards by certain date, offering of rewards/freebies, and/or liability shift for skimming incidents).

"Banks have always been compliant to regulators.  Other banks are already done, some are almost done.  Rest assured that by June this year, banks has already migrated to EMV," said  CBC past president Maximo Rey Eleccion.