Equity banks on new technology in its war against fraudsters

Equity Bank has installed a new technology that it hopes will secure its points of sale from fraudsters.

Equity, the country’s largest bank by customer accounts, is banking on the EMV (Europay-Mastercard-VISA) to provide a security buffer for its clients as it seeks new means to maintain security standards on its extensive card network and plans to roll out more card-based solutions.

“This will allow the bank to protect itself, its customers and merchants where POS terminals are installed against unscrupulous fraud and drastically reduce fraudulent activity” said Victor Ndlovu, Visa Card regional manager.

Increased fraudulent activity in the country has drawn attention to the operational standards of financial institutions, who are mulling new ways to secure their networks from intrusion.

Over the last few months, Equity has been piecing together the cornerstones of an aggressive cost-cutting and time-saving strategy for its payments business.

Ensuring that its security standards are maintained at over 3,000 points - 2,500 POS and 550 ATMs - has also proved a challenge to the institution, which with its four million customers, maintains the largest roster of bank accounts in the country.

Two weeks ago, it announced that it had inked a deal with a Belgian business partner that saw the introduction of a card management system that would speed up transactions made at POS.

The system can handle over 60 million cards with speed performance of 180,000 transactions per minute.

Print-out receipts

With its latest move, Equity is in a position to eliminate the paper receipting methods which leave its customers open to fraud.

Both actions translate to reduced cost and time spent on card transactions.

With the installation of the new technology, the bank will process and manage Visa cards with the EMV chip at all Equity Bank outlets and Points of Sales (POS) seamlessly by accepting card and pin, without the need for customers using print-out receipts as is the case at the moment.

Equity Bank’s point of sale terminals (POS) are available in retail outlets such as supermarkets, chemists and petrol stations throughout the country -- areas where the bank is not necessarily in charge of security arrangements.

Establishing a presence at these POS has allowed the bank to offer its customers the ability to make direct purchases from their accounts without any bank charges as well as enabling cash withdrawals from outlets after purchase of goods.

EMV is a global standard for credit and debit payment cards based on chip card technology, built to ensure a more secure environment for transactions.

Equity customers join the ranks of over 730 million EMV compliant chip-based payment cards in use worldwide.

EMV cards contain a small computer chip, which not only gives them greater memory capacity, but improves security for consumers by making it nearly impossible for unscrupulous people to decode or tamper with.

Impossible to copy

The chip is capable of securely storing data that uniquely identifies the card and the cardholder, putting an end to misuse through loss, stolen and counterfeit cards.

It means that card issuers can provide assurance to both cardholders and retailers that their transactions are legitimate and cannot be counterfeited.

“The chip card is impossible to copy and is tamper proof, as EMV-chip cards are widely known as some of the best and most cost effective solutions available to mitigate fraud.

Ultimately, this new technology will drastically reduce fraud activity in the bank’s outlets,” said Equity CEO James Mwangi.

Mr Mwangi said card security was a big issue worldwide that could no longer be ignored, hence the need by the bank to install new security standards practised worldwide to protect its customers from unscrupulous people.