EMV - Chip & PIN

EMV is the international standard for interoperation of Integrated Circuit (IC) chip cards and chip card capable POS devices.  It defines the interaction between IC cards and processing devices for financial transactions at the physical, electrical, data and application levels, and was developed by the card schemes Europay, MasterCard and VISA in the mid 1990s.

The key driver for the implementation of EMV worldwide has been protection against card fraud.  Under EMV, financial transactions are more secure than traditional credit card payments which use data encoded in a magnetic stripe on the back of the card.  This is because encryption algorithms such as DES, Triple-DES, RSA and SHA are used to provide authentication of the card to POS device, and to the processing host. 

In the United Kingdom, the EMV standard was progressively introduced in 2003, marketed to consumers and merchants as “Chip and PIN". By 2007, more than 98 per cent of all payment terminals in the UK had upgraded to Chip and PIN. As a result, card fraud losses on the UK high street have fallen 67 per cent since 2004.

In 2006, EMV was introduced by the primary EFTPOS switch for New Zealand, ETSL, although local banks had not begun issuing chip cards.  Local EMV trials also began in Australia during 2006.

In 2008, in conjunction with the rapid growth of locally issued chip cards, a number of Australian banks began the lengthy process of updating their fleets of POS devices ready for EMV. 

Quest EMV Update

Quest has been deploying EMV enabled terminals into New Zealand since late 2006, and during 2008 and 2009 undertook the development of a range of new EMV financial payment applications for our supported Australian acquirers.

Commencing in early 2010, Quest began rolling out EMV across our Australian network of direct customers and authorised dealers.

For more information on upgrading your hardware to use EMV, please contact your Quest representative or alternatively send an email to emvupgrades@questps.com.au.