(17 May 2011 – Europe) The European Central Bank (ECB) has called for cards issued in the single euro payments area (SEPA) to only use chips, not mag-stripes to cut down on fraud.At a joint conference with representatives of Austria’s Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), the ECB’s Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell stressed the importance of security within SEPA and recommended that issuers should ditch mag-stripes from cards.
Tumpel-Gugerell also repeated her calls for the creation of a new European card scheme to compete with established, US-based players Visa and MasterCard.
The ECB executive board member also took the opportunity to call for a deadline of January 2013 for credit transfers and January 2014 for direct debits.