Old bank cards soon to be limited

The use of magnetic-strip bank cards to transfer money between banks is expected to come to an end as soon as October as part of the government's policy to promote the use of the more secure integrated-circuit (IC) cards.

Over the past few days, IC-embedded cards accounted for 64 percent of all inter-bank transactions, Pan Wei-chung (潘維忠), associate manager of the Financial Information Service Co (財金公司), said yesterday.

The company is funded by the Ministry of Finance.

The Bankers' Association (銀行公會) predicts that this percentage will rise to 75 percent around July and August.

"When the target is met, the association will announce a three-month preparation period before revoking inter-bank transactions by magnetic-strip cards," said Jong Huey-jen (鍾慧貞), deputy director-general of the Bureau of Monetary Affairs.

This means that the use of magnetic cards will be limited to the automatic teller machines of the bank which issued the card.

As of the end of last month, the nation's 41 banking institutions had issued a total of 24.5 million chip-embedded cards, or 91 percent of the bank cards in circulation in the past six months, she said.

However, Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行), Fuhwa Bank (復華銀行), credit cooperatives and farmers' and fishermen's associations reported that less than 45 percent of their magnetic-strip cards had been exchanged for the new cards, according to the latest statistics provided by the Bureau of Monetary Affairs.

Taipei Fubon only started converting its cards after Fubon Commercial Bank (富邦銀行) and TaipeiBank (台北銀行) were formally merged in January.