Smartcards on way from banks

Banks will begin issuing "smartcards" on a large scale this year to replace conventional debit and credit cards, Visa's New Zealand country manager, Ian Jamieson, says.

Jamieson says hundreds of thousands of smartcards containing microchips complying with Europay, Mastercard and Visa's EMV standard would be in circulation by the end of the year.

Credit card companies want to eliminate the use of magnetic strips on bankcards and move to chip-only smartcards to reduce fraud.