New Zealand banks begin chip card issuance

A number of New Zealand banks have begun issuing chip cards with the majority of EFTPOS terminals now able of accept them. This means you will begin seeing more chip cards presented for payment over the coming months as they gradually replace magnetic swipe cards.  

Chip card transactions will provide cardholders and merchants with more secure payments, helping to reduce card fraud and chargebacks.

During the transition to chip cards, you will see a mixture of chip and magnetic swipe card for payment. You will be familiar with how to process a magnetic swipe card transaction already, but may not be familiar with a chip card transaction where you ‘dip' the card in the terminal and leave it dipped for the entire transaction. We have therefore taken this opportunity to remind you how to process chip card transactions.

In general chip card transactions take longer to process than magnetic swipe transactions, therefore new generation terminals with more processing power are being introduced to help speed up transactions. Connectivity is also switching from the older dial-up method to IP / Broadband connections which significantly speed up tranasction processing.

The chip card payment process is also new to cardholders. It will therefore take some time for them to adjust to this new payment process. While cardholders should be receiving instructions on how to process chip transactions with their new cards from card issuers, we would appreciate your help in assisting customers to adjust to this new more secure form of payment.

If you have any questions or problems processing chip card transactions, please contact our Technical Support Team on 0800 338 767, option 2.