Last updated: 19 March 2014
UNFCU celebrates the first year since the launch of United Nations Federal Credit Union’s (UNFCU) globally compliant chip and PIN credit cards with newly released results of the financial cooperative’s effectiveness study.
Merrill Halpern, of UNFCU, reported customer satisfaction with the program is very high, and delivered some very impressive performance results:
- New account applications — up 158%
- New credit line requests — up 382%
- Existing line increase requests — up 275%
- Revolving balances — up 20%
- Purchases — up 18%
The results of this are outstanding! This marks the first year of the official launch of the first gobally compliant chip and pin card. To read more, click here.
I want to congratulate Merrill on the success of his EMV program and thank him for sharing his results with the industry. I’m sure this will encourage other banks to begin offering EMV cards to their international travelers.
This is especially true considering the European payments industry is moving forward with liability shifts, the removal of the magnetic stripe from their bankcards, giving merchants the right to refuse magnetic strip cards and an initiative to require strong authentication of all e-commerce transactions by 2013.
Toni Merschen, the former group head of chip for MasterCard international and now principal of his own consulting firm, told us at the conference that the European Payment Council (EPC), which is the voice of European banks, passed resolutions asking the regional payment scheme operators, such as Cartes Bancaires, APACS and others, to change their rules so that the banks would be able to move forward with these changes.
Of course their motivation for removing the mag stripe, refusing mag stripe cards requiring strong authentication for Internet purchases is to further reduce exported skimming fraud and achieve the full benefits of their own EMV migration.
