Oberthur Technologies has acquired a service centre in Bogotá from local vendor Dyetron in a bid to take advantage of Colombia's EMV migration programme. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Oberthur formed a partnership with Dyetron in June to create a service centre that could assist with Colombia's migration to EMV, which was scheduled to start at the first of this year.
Colombia's Superintendencia Financiera had imposed a 1 January, 2010 deadline for issuers and merchants to migrate to EMV payment. After this deadline, the liability over fraudulent transaction rests solely on the party that hasn't upgraded to EMV - whether it be the issuer or the merchant.
The French firm is now leasing the Bogota-based, MasterCard and Visa certified centre from which it will offer migration for local banks and EMV deployment for international financial institutions with customers in Colombia.
Martin Ferenczi, MD, Americas, card systems, Oberthur, says: "As a global provider of payment solutions, Oberthur Technologies is committed to the Colombian and South American payment markets. leveraging our expertise in providing over 200 EMV migrations worldwide, we see this acquisition as a focused solution to meet the needs of our banking customers in Latin America."