The cash card in your pocket is set for a massive security overhaul when banks begin the roll out of a plan to replace 20 million magnetic ATM and credit cards with chip cards.
Hong Kong Monetary Authority chiefs said yesterday that in addition to replacing the cards, banks would upgrade 2,900 ATM terminals, starting early next year. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2015.
The announcement comes just two weeks after police arrested a gang of international conmen who withdrew more than HK$800,000 from ATM machines in the city over a two-week period using blank cards with magnetic strips encoded with stolen data. About 200 bogus bank cards were seized.
In January, three Romanians were arrested after 29 fake payment cards were used to withdraw HK$2 million.
'Compared with the magnetic strips currently in use, such chip-based technology will make it much more difficult for fraudsters to replace ATM cards with stolen data,' the authority said.
The Hong Kong Association of Banks said chip-based technology was picked after a year-long study.
'Chip-based cards are more advanced and complex than magnetic-strip cards. The adoption of chip-based ATM technology will further enhance the security of cards,' the association said.