Middle East banks are on track to meet the 2002 deadline to get their infrastructure ready for smart card transactions, the Gulf News reported Wednesday.
The daily quoted a top Visa official as saying "we saw a sea change in attitude once the Y2K issue was behind us. Things but were slow for three months, since then we have seen a real desire by banks to upgrade their IT systems and for new technology products.”
Under the recent EMV protocol, banks must upgrade their networks - ATMs, POS terminals, etc, by 2002 to handle smart cards, the daily added.
Peter Scriven, general manager and senior vice-president for the Middle East at Visa International was quoted by the paper as saying that "the regional banks realize their operations have to be future-proofed to meet global standards, be it the EMV deadline on chips or security models for Internet-based transactions. And they are willing to make the investments required for this." - Albawaba.com
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