It appears that the EMV cards currently being distributed by all the major banks have two Achilles heels – the point of sale equipment is not up to scratch and neither are the staff in retail outlets, in terms of training, and the end result is that the consumer suffers and there is brand damage.
The introduction of the so-called smart card in South Africa has been a stop/start affair for the past couple of years, with technology challenges being at the root of the problem, but it appears that momentum is at last building up with the news that Standard Bank, self-proclaimed leaders in the field having already distributed 180 000 smart or chip and pin cards to their clients, with plans to increase the distribution to 20 000 cars per month and aiming to put an estimated 1 million cards into circulation.
Nedbank is also back on track and issuing cards to their client base, and are surprising considered to be in second place, followed by Absa and FNB bringing up the rear.
While this is good news for the banks, the bad news for consumers is that the point of sale network is not keeping up and neither is the training for staff in retail outlets.
According to Standard Bank spokesperson staff have been trained on the new POS equipment, but they don’t stay around. Added to which, at the moment the EMV transactions are relatively few and far between, and estimated at 1 in every 10 transactions.
Added to which the POS equipment hasn’t been standardized so error messages and prompts aren’t the same between the various POS equipment. The POS may well reject a transaction with an error message, which may not display the real cause of the failure.
Standard Bank says that there is a forum to resolve these and other operational issues.
Standard Bank also warned consumers that swiping is a thing of the past and dipping is the way of the future. The credit card needs to be ‘dipped’ into the card reader and a pin code entered.
So consumers now have yet another number to remember. Consumers should be made aware that this dip and enter pin code approach has already been adopted in the many of the EU states, and people traveling there should ensure that they have their new chip-and-pin credit cards.