Chip & PIN: 16 banks ride on Verve card promo

As the deadline for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) draw nearer, banks in the country are now riding on the recently ended Verve card promo to migrate all existing magnetic stripe cards to the more secure Chip & Personal Identification Number (PIN) platform.

Divisional Head, Verve Business of Interswitch, Mrs. Tobi Boshoro, affirmed at the weekend, that 16 banks in the country in association with Interswitch are currently leveraging the Verve National Consumer Promo to encourage bank customers to replace their magnetic stripe cards with the Verve chip and PIN cards.

She said the 16 banks involved in the Verve “Get & Win” campaign, which ran from August 16 to September 16 include First Bank, Intercontinental Bank, ETB, Stanbic IBTC, Oceanic Bank, Unity Bank, Sterling Bank and Spring Bank.

Others, she said, are Wema Bank, Bank PHB, FCMB, Afribank, Fidelity Bank, Skye Bank, Ecobank and Finbank. Boshoro noted that prior to the take-off of the promo, these banks have issued over 7 million Verve cards to their customers.

She pointed out that globally, the challenge of card security is a huge concern for financial institutions and this has prompted the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to direct the banks to upgrade the existing 30 million magnetic stripe debt cards to the more secure Verve Chip and PIN platform by September 31, 2010.

As said by her, in order to fast track the migration to Chip & PIN cards, Interswitch introduced the Verve “Get & Win” campaign to attract bank customers to sign up for Verve cards from their bank branches and get instant reward, comprising branded flash drives (wrist band & card), car air fresheners, T-shirts, branded writing pens, among others.

She explained that there were three entry levels and methods for the promo, namely “Get & Win”, “Use & Win - Weekly”, and “Use & Win – Monthly.”

Boshoro said that to participate in the “Get and Win” promo, a bank customer should collect a Verve card from the bank, change the PIN and return the print out from an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) to indicate that the PIN was successfully changed to the Customer Service Officer (CSO) at the bank branch.

“The Verve cardholder immediately gets an instant gift while stocks last,” she said.


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