Magnetic stripe card - EMV chip-based card - Fusion - WeRIndia

Are you still using magnetic stripe card? Are you postponing to get a new EMP chip-based card in the place of your old magnetic card?

Have you received any message from bank in recent days to upgrade your debit and credit card? If you receive that message, and did not respond, then you might have ignored it considering as a spam message.

But, this message is not a spam. As per the guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India, it is mandatory to upgrade your debit and credit cards before December 31.

Otherwise, your cards will not function. If you happen to see any link, do not click on it. Rather visit your bank branch to upgrade your card.

Why did the RBI issue guidelines to upgrade the old magnetic stripe cards?

Online scams and phishing attacks have grown significantly in these days. Magnetic cards can be easily cloned. The information related to customers is stored in static form which can be seen on the back side of the card.

Hence, the RBI has issued such guidelines to protect the customers from online predators.

Not just that, these old cards are a big threat as they have been found in financial fraud cases. In this scenario, the RBI has issued directives to the banks to replace all the old debit and credit cards with the EMV chip-based cards by December 31, 2018.

EMV stands for Europay, Mastercard, Visa. These new cards are being issued by the banks from January 2016.

If your account is opened prior to that, you might have been issued a magnetic stripe only card. So, you must have to replace your old card with the new card.

You can replace your card free of cost as banks bear the replacement cost.

This rule is applicable to all domestic as well as international debit and credit cards.

EMV chip-based cards are more secure than magnetic stripe cards. They have PIN to provide extra security, and higher standards of data encryption and storage technology facility.

Furthermore, the information is store in dynamic format in these cards. Hence, cloning these cards is difficult.

However, never share your sensitive information with unknown persons as it involves risk.

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