'Smart' card to fight fraud

By RICHARD BRADDELL

ANZ expects the first "smart" credit card launched in New Zealand to be quickly taken up by merchants wanting to protect themselves from fraud.

The silicon chip card, launched in conjunction with Visa, is much harder to crack than the existing magnetic stripes and can be used to make payments over the internet.

It will also protect merchants who currently bear the risk in a fraudulent transaction, or when they take a card number for payment without the card actually being present.

At first, ANZ will give away card readers that can be plugged into computers and used to make secure internet transactions using a standard developed jointly by Europay, Mastercard and Visa.

ANZ cards general manager Ian Colley expects rapid acceptance among the bank's merchant customers, who will be able to protect themselves not just from internet fraud, but from "skimming" type frauds, where the magnetic stripe information is read and used to create a counterfeit card.

ANZ says 30,000 New Zealand merchants, out of an Australasian total of 80,000, will have to pay their share of an estimated $50 million equipment upgrade.

But the bank is optimistic of rapid penetration because of the heightened security and because it controls 40 per cent of the merchant terminal market through subsidiary Eftpos NZ.

Eftpos NZ is already bringing new "eklick" terminals capable of reading the cards into NZ, and they will become widely available from September.

Mr Colley said smart cards would ultimately have multiple applications - they could have health details or be used for loyalty programmes.