RIYADH, 27 September 2005 — Saudi banks have been urged to consider outsourcing functions to third-party service providers in order to meet the January 2006 international deadline for EMV (Europay MasterCard and Visa) compliance. The subject of a workshop organized by WAMAD yesterday, the deadlines call for maximizing security by replacing magnetic cards.
“EMV is a requirement by leading card companies — Visa, MasterCard and EuroPay — to migrate from the magnetic strip to chip-based cards in order to maximize security, eliminate card fraud and support additional card functions,” said Moritz Wittwer, manager for international marketing at Trub AG, the Zurich-based EMV card-provider.
All banks are required to begin implementing EMV standards in January; Saudi Arabia has nearly seven million magnetic debit and credit cards in circulation.
A number of local banks, including Banque AlSaudi AlFransi, Arab National Bank, Saudi British Bank and Saudi Investment Bank as well as technologists, interested delegates and WAMAD staff attended the event. Wittwer enumerated various factors that may influence Saudi commercial banks to outsource the issuing of EMV cards in their branches.
He said that these included the need to tap into the pool of EMV that will be available in a service bureau. Plans were also made to set up a Saudi-based EMV service bureau as part of a joint venture initiative between WAMAD, Trub and Dubai-based Eastern Networks. Wittwer said that Trub was already supplying more than 90 percent of EMV debit and credit cards for Swiss banks with its 80-million-cards-a-year plant near Zurich which is certified by both VISA and MasterCard.
Referring to the need for a services bureau in the Kingdom, Moses Kuria, WAMAD’s chief operating officer, said: “Saudi Service Bureau will bring together Trub’s international EMV experience based on Swiss reliability and competence, Eastern Network’s regional outsourcing experience and WAMAD’s extensive knowledge of the Saudi banking industry.”
