India's HDFC Bank Ltd. has converted more than 200,000 of its credit cardholders to smart cards that comply with the EMV Integrated Circuit Card security format.
In May the Mumbai company outlined plans to migrate at least 500,000 of its magnetic-stripe credit cards to EMV, and an executive said last week that it was well on its way toward reaching that goal.
HDFC first is distributing EMV cards to existing premium cardholders and to new, premium credit card customers.
"On a priority basis, we first replaced cards for those who travel abroad frequently, especially to Europe and Southeast Asian countries, where chip-based cards are mandatory," the executive said.
The bank already has enabled its entire merchant network in India to accept EMV cards.
It has issued about 4.6 million credit cards in India, and adds more than 80,000 new cardholders a month, mostly in the premium segment, the executive said.
