German banks have agreed to issue 34 million V PAY / girocard cards – chip and PIN technology in strong demand
Bank card from Visa Europe immediately prevents fraud from skimming at ATMs
Frankfurt am Main, 14 February 2011 – Ever more German banks and credit institutions are converting their bank card portfolio to the especially secure V PAY / girocard card. The German member banks of Visa Europe have currently agreed 34 million orders for V PAY / girocard cards. Of these, ten million V PAY / girocards will be issued to bank customers by the middle of 2011.
The reason for the increasing issue of cards also lies in the massive rise in fraud by skimming and copying of the girocard magnetic stripe at German ATMs reported by the German Federal Criminal Police Office at the beginning of 2011. V PAY stops skimming fraud immediately, as the chip and PIN technology prevents losses from the use of illegal card duplicates at ATMs.
“With V PAY, all security-relevant payment transactions will be processed by chip and PIN. Only additional services such as the account statement printer or door opener remain magnetic stripe based. Since the V PAY product launch in 2007, not a single case of skimming fraud has been reported in Europe. V PAY already meets the security requirements of the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BKA) without a long lead time and high conversion costs", stresses Ottmar Bloching, General Manager of Visa Europe in Germany.
“V PAY not only attracts high demand in Germany, but also in Europe. Banks plan to issue over 63 million V PAY cards. This confirms the necessity of chip-based payment cards. Banks view the magnetic stripe as obsolescent - and see the future in purely chip-based payment method”, says Jutta Müller-Liefeld, Vice President V PAY Marketing at Visa Europe. In Germany, Postbank is the biggest individual issuer of V PAY / girocard along with the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken through DZ BANK and WGZ BANK, BW Bank, Landesbank Berlin, Sparkasse Jena and Sparkasse Niederbayern Mitte.
V PAY is based on the secure EMV chip and meets the high security requirements of consumers, retail, banks and savings banks. In Europe, EMV technology is widespread at PoS terminals in retail and at ATMs – in contrast with other continents where the magnetic stripe is at the forefront. As over 99 percent of bankcard transactions take place in Europe, V PAY was consistently conceived for use in Europe. So the previous form of fraud in which criminals pick up cash abroad at ATMs outside Europe with illegally copied German girocard magnetic stripe data could be stopped in its tracks by V PAY.
V PAY cardholders can, of course, also shop securely in the whole of European retail using chip and PIN entry. This is particularly important when travelling to neighbouring countries, in transit and for cross-border purchases in border regions.
