Credit cards verification in Australia

[img_assist|nid=7594|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=67]Credit card purchases in Australia will soon be verified by entering a personal identification number on a keypad instead of signing a name.

Beginning from June 4 all Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club credit cards will support the change which is expected to speed up retail queues and decrease fraud.

Credit cards with a magnetic stripe are to be put on equal footing with Eftpos cards as it is said by Simon Greig, project manager with Phoenix Consulting.

Australia is said to be only the second country after New Zealand to launch the technology. In other countries auxiliary information on credit cards is preset into a computer chip which saves time for the customers and helps to avoid efforts of signing receipts.

In case buyers prefer signing the slips, they will be able to do it. But new function is notable for its speed. "When you're in a queue and have five people ahead of you and 15 people behind you, you probably want to move pretty quickly," says Greig "If you've got a PIN, it will add ... speed."

New technology is to be applied to over 20 million cards and 600,000 point-of-sale terminals across the country.

Steven Anderson of the financial research company InfoChoice: "From my point of view, it is a fantastic addition because it will - without a doubt - reduce some fraud. In every country where you have to have a PIN, fraud numbers have dropped dramatically."

Next level of security today is represented by the computer chips embedded in most European cards and some newer credit cards in Australia and this technology is expected to be widespread in Australia soon. The roll out of cards with magnetic stripes to enable PIN verification for purchases is considered to be just a first step towards more sophisticated levels of security.