Established EMV Technology to curb ATM insecurity

Last Updated 13 years ago by Kenya Engineer

By Daisy Gakuu

The victims of cybercrime, amid other cash withdrawal threats, have a reason to smile following the launch of the EMV Technology-based Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in the Country last week. Introduced by Diebold, an American tech firm in conjunction with Tracom Services, a Kenyan IT solutions company, EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa; a global standard for inter-operation of chip cards, point of sale terminals and ATMs, for authenticating credit and debit card transactions.

There have been efforts made to enhance the safety in accessing money via ATMs: The “Be alert/ Kaa chonjo” campaign launched by Kenya Bankers Association (KBA)-which provides basic information like; areas to check out for when a bank customer is at an ATM and tips on how to protect one’s PIN, and Banks installing safety enhancements such as skimming detection devices known as jitters.

This latest progress in ATM Technology follows a pre-requisite campaign launched in November last year dubbed “The great migration to EMV” courtesy of Paynet and De La Rue.  The objective was to encourage Kenyan banks to phase out the old magnetic stripe cards and instead issue chip and pin cards to their customers, to boost high security and multifunction.

“The new cards use a microprocessor installed in a chip embedded on the cards. This contains coded information needed to authorize payment through a multitude of protection features that makes it significantly more secure than a traditional magnetic stripe card,” said Scott Atkins, Head of Sales at De La Rue in November.

Given these ATM machines use a biometric fingerprint scanner, the banks’ clients will have to provide additional details to the bank, have their fingerprints scanned and entered into the banks database. Afterwards, their (clients) account will then be programmed so that the ATM machine demands a fingerprint authentication before allowing the transaction to go ahead.

“The fingerprint is the one unique thing that a fraudster cannot steal from a banks customer,” said Andrew Muiruri, Business Development Manager at Tracom Services during the launch of the ATMs.
Diebold Product Marketing Manager of ATMs, Martin Koffijberg said the biometric sensor will be optional on ATM machines as per the requirements of the banks.

“Card trapping is regaining popularity due to the EMV technology that has countered the problem of skimming. With the fingerprint required to complete a transaction, a fraudster who traps the card will still not be able to access the account afterwards,” said Mr Koffijberg.

The ATMs also feature a one way safety lock system to prevent insertion of jammers into the money dispensing unit, hence offset swindlers who use jammers to block the cash from the ATM.  In addition, the card insertion slot also comes with a sensor that detects whether any object other than the card is inserted, and halts the transaction detaining the card. Scammers have been known to place objects in the ATM slots used to skim and mimic card details of their target then later use the details to duplicate the card and swindle the target’s account.

Moreover, these ATMs house are ultraviolet light point to help detect fake currency notes and mirrors on the top of the machines to help the bank customer spot swindlers.

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