Norwich and Peterborough Building Society (N&P) is now able to issue chip and PIN cards following its outsourcing deal with communications and processing specialist, Transaction Network Services (UK) Ltd (TNS).
TNS is helping N&P to respond to the industry-wide drive to tackle fraud with the provision of fully EMV-compliant (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) card issuing and transaction services. Outsourcing this process is a cost effective route for smaller card issuers, enabling them to benefit from existing compliant technologies and processing expertise.
With more than 107 million chip and PIN cards in circulation in the UK, N&P can now provide its (100,000 plus) customers with the latest technology for securing transactions, whilst maintaining its low level of fraud, which is currently around a quarter of the industry average.
The first official N&P chip-enabled Visa debit card was issued on the 1st August 2005, following a successful three-month live trial of 130 cards and over 3,000 transactions. N&P will continue to migrate customers from magnetic strip to EMV-chip cards when new, replacement, lost or stolen cards are required and expects all debit card customers to be upgraded by the end of 2006.
Paul Rippon, head of banking and mortgage operations at Norwich and Peterborough, comments, "We need to ensure we continue to provide our customers with the latest in transaction security and efficiency. Working with TNS has given us the ability to balance risk and investment and meet the demand for faster and more secure EMV-compliant transactions."
TNS organises the entire process for N&P from issuing the chip card, receiving the transaction from wherever the card is used, verifying the PIN, checking the status of the card itself and the status of the owners balance, and authorising the transaction. TNS' fully EMV compliant service is available to all card-issuing organisations, including those that do not have connections to their own ATM estate, or access to POS terminals or networks.
As part of the service, TNS handles both lost and stolen cards and can stop a card immediately after it is reported lost or stolen, by sending a message directly to the card's chip to destroy it, rendering the card unusable. TNS also has the capability to develop the chip script engine enabling more functionality and possibilities for chip communication.