Is HSBC going to Switch from Maestro to V Pay?

smithja

It is going on prepaid cards first the new terminals will be phased in at the end of this year into 2009. They will be for topping up the card but will also add value to the Chip if you wish and they will still accept swipe top-ups if the Chip reader fails or the Chip cant be read.

James

ShelfStacker_3

Have you got any proof or anything of this?

smithja

I do but if you wish to find out you will need to contact the press office at Payzone and Newcastle Building Society as I cannot post it at the moment.

Sorry

James

smithja

I have found a link but the site seems to be down at the moment, google "mastercard repower".

http://www.mastercardrepower.com/

James

Edit: Just thinking it might not provide any use to you as it is an American site and they dont have Chips in their cards. rePower with be launched in the UK with the ability to store funds on the Chip.

smithja

This should be of more use, but will you beleive it?

Pre-Authorised Debit

Pre-Authorised Debit (PAD) is a new form of chip-enabled payment which is very safe and relatively inexpensive. The cardholder is issued with a card which supports PAD payments only, using funds which have been pre-authorised in advance. Every payment is authorised off-line and the chip calculates the total amount spent until the funding limit has been reached, at which point the cardholder is obliged to recharge the PAD account by pre-authorising a further tranche of funds using a method at the discretion of the issuer.
This new product has several potential business applications:

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Because all funds are pre-authorised, the PAD card can be safely issued to sub-prime customers who would not normally be eligible for a payment card, such as young people, or people with no previous banking history, thereby expanding the customer base. <LI class=MsoNormal style="COLOR: black; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">Because all processing is off-line, it becomes economic to handle low value payments such as at parking meters or fast food outlets. In this sense, PAD is rather like a stored value e-purse payment method such as Mondex, but with the huge advantage (in this country) that it works on the standard EMV infrastructure.
[*]In partnership with third parties, PAD is beginning to look like an attractive application for special situations such as the payment of benefits by government, or in conjunction with "Citizens Cards" issued by local authorities.Coming to the UK at the end of the year, first on Mastercard and Maestro pre-paid cards.

The source of that copy and paste is:

http://www.ncollin.demon.co.uk/Future/emv_chip.htm

James

PROLIANT

Yes, but this is addition to the existing debit card system?

smithja

Not at first well at least in the UK (EMV is the standard adopted by Japan and they are now using stored value cards all day every day), it is being rolled out here on prepaid Mastercards and Maestro cards (I think Visa's version of rePower is called ReadyLink) then later will be put on other cards. If you go to http://www.emvco.com/ you can see this is a very complicated issue that took years of negotiation to get card chips standardised and the terminals that read the chips standardised, so that infrastructure is already in place to read the value on a chip.

James

smithja

Just got a Google alert and now Visa are on the bandwagon too of storing value on card chips. I suppose it was bound to happen and is not as far fetched and untested as shelfstacker thought. So they must be well aware of the issues of system crashes and what losses they and industry would incur if the UK system went down for even a few hours, it would be alot of missed sales and very annoyed customers to say the least. This is the link to the press release:

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=18469

They are also going to be adding the contactless facility to prepaid cards pretty soon I think Altair will be doing it first (again I got another press release about that but think I must have deleted it), but it will be going on both Visa and Mastercards including Maestro prepaid cards. I am quite looking forward to the UK roll out of this as I think it will save alot of time and effort and will save people money in the long run as you wont go to the shops for something under a tenner with cash, you had to stop at the ATM to get, to end up spending the change when you would not have otherwise.

James

smithja

Did anyone ever find out if HSBC are going to be issuing V-Pay card in the UK?

I just wondered as I saw the first decal for it this morning I was walking past a Nationwide ATM and I thought I saw it on the screen out of the corner of my eye and had to go back to check and it is definitely there.

James

PROLIANT

From what I have read, RBS have signed up for it and other banks are to follow, it is being signed for integration into the current uk ATM and Debit system, not sure if the banks are going replace existing debit systems with v-pay though, not sure yet, I might be wrong.