To beat the fraudsters First Choice completed a roll-out of Comms XL's SmartCCard Chip and PIN software within its network of First Choice Travel Shops and Holiday Hypermarkets, together with an Ingenico terminal, to all their Foreign Currency Bureaux, making it the first major leisure travel company to do this, and also before the 2005 liability shift deadline.

Rad Sofronijevic, Sales and Operations Director, First Choice Retail commented: "We are aware that Foreign Currency Exchange is a highly popular area for card fraud, because of the high values on offer, so we immediately decided that implementing Chip and PIN was the only way forward for the company and the protection of our customers."

She continued: "We had worked with Comms XL for many years and we were delighted when it approached us with a solution for our Bureaux that would not only work well in this unique environment, but could be rolled out before the liability shift."

The Comms XL SmartCCard software was fully integrated with the First Choice existing EPOS system from Comtec, supplying the retail staff of over 300 shops with a seamless link from one system to the other, making it as simple as possible to use. That coupled with the use of the Ingenico terminal, gave customers and staff a simple to use Chip and PIN solution from start to finish.

Rad Sofronijevic from First Choice concluded: "In total we rolled 500 Pin Pads to the Bureaux and all were up and running before January 2005. We are now taking approximately 9,000 Chip and Pin transactions a month and we are confident that our Foreign Currency Exchanges are now safe from fraudulent card transactions."