Thursday, July 19, 2007

Old pin-terminals to be replaced to prevent further debit-card fraud

Parool has the news that criminals have now succeeded in manipulating a specific kind of terminal in order to skim all the data. It's an older breed of terminals and Currence, scheme-owner for PIN, has issued further guidelines and encourages shop owners to quickly replace the terminals.

The news comes at interesting times. Retailers are not keen on replacing terminals. They wish to use them as long as possible. And all kinds of replacements come with a lot of fuss, such as they kicked a couple of weeks ago on the liability shift that comes with EMV-compliant terminals. Due to previous political fuss, banks in the Netherlands even promised their retailers that they would not be unduly forced to replace terminals; thus extending the end date for full EMV-migration to 2013.

Now, what would be better for the Dutch society: retailers that keep on being pennywise and use terminals well beyond their life-span (with higher chances of skimming fraud and all involved inconvenience to their customers) or a more quick replacement of terminals by retailers, helping out in preventing fraud?