CHIP & PIN: INTERSWITCH LAUNCHES VERVE CARD, OFFERS CARDHOLDERS SECURITY.
Interswitch, Nigeria’s premier payment transactions switching company, has released Verve card, a pan-African innovative chip and PIN, EMV compliant payment card, ahead of Central Bank of Nigeria’s directive which required Nigerians banks to convert all existing magnetic stripe cards to a more secured chip & PIN platform by the end of second quarter of 2009.
With the release of Verve card, which can be used on mobile, ATMs, PoS, Web and the Internet, Nigerian banks are expected to begin the conversion of 26 million cards in circulation to the chip & PIN platform since major payment card schemes in Europe, Middle East, South America and Africa have converted their cards to the secured smartcard platform.
According to Mr. Mitchell Elegbe, Managing Director/CEO of InterSwitch, who spoke to journalists at the media launch of Verve card at Protea Hotel, Ikeja, the expected change from magnetic strip cards to chip & PIN platform, is what necessitated the release of Verve card into the financial market. Elegbe said CBN’s directive was made in the best interest of banks, merchants and cardholders because existing magnetic stripe cards have minimal storage space, cannot store applications, offer little flexibility for new product development, are easy to duplicate and offer minimal security features.
However, Verve card on other hand is secured with integrated circuit chip (ICC) and can carry enhanced data. The ‘chip’ part refers to the smart card – a plastic payment card with an embedded microprocessor, which contains the same information as a magnetic stripe but it has additional processing capabilities and a secure memory. In developing the Verve card, Mastercard MChip 4 technology was adopted. The card has bigger storage capacity, offline PIN verification and can perform cryptographic calculations.
“The microprocessor can hold multiple applications where an application may be a specific brand of credit card, loyalty card, gift card, staff discount card, etc; so a cardholder could have credit and debit applications, loyalty applications and electronic ticketing on a single physical card”, Elegbe explained.
Specifically, Elegbe informed that Verve cards can hold information securely and is difficult to copy or alter. The security and EMV features in Verve card guarantees a higher level of security for payment transactions than magnetic stripe cards. Interswitch has also initiated eight other security initiatives; MoneyGuard (which allows cardholders send an sms from their phones to block their cards should they suspect any unusual activities), Fraud Watch (a portal and email for fraud reporting and information management, Fraud Guard ( a fraud management and transaction security system), Fraud Insure (card fraud Insurance), Fraud Team (Risk Management team), Identity Guard (Token based strong authentication), Fraud Aware (Cardholder Awareness Campaign) and Data Guard (EMV Mchip 4).
The security features in Verve ensure “confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation”. Confidentiality refers to the fact that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access while integrity ensures information stored on Verve card remains the same throughout the life of the transaction. Authentication guarantees that the user is who he says he is. Non-repudiation ascertains that one party of a transaction cannot deny having received a transaction nor can the other party deny having sent a transaction. “Only Verve delivers more security features, more rewards, more channels and more value to the users”, Elegbe said.
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