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Nine out of 10 Canadians have a debit card, and many have more than one,
Mark O'Connell, president and CEO of Interac Association, the Canadian ATM and
debit payment network, recently told attendees at SourceMedia's ATM, Debit &
Prepaid Forum in Chandler, Ariz.
Some 33 million consumers live in Canada, where financial institutions have issued some 35 million debit cards that are used to generate 4 billion transactions each year,
O'Connell said.
Interac has set a deadline to convert all Canadian ATMs to accept chip cards by
the end of 2012 and all point-of-sale terminals to accept them by 2015. The majority
of the ATMs and POS terminals will be able to accept chip-based debit cards by
2010, said O'Connell, who was unable to provide exact numbers because banks are
in different stages of conversion.
The conversion will make debit transactions more secure and allow for more
functions on one card, he said. An initial chip card trial began in Kitchener-
Waterloo, Ontario, last fall. So far, chip cardholders there have made 2.4 million
POS transactions and 1.8 million ATM transactions, O'Connell said.
The United States should begin looking at offering chip cards because criminals
cannot counterfeit them as easily to commit fraud, O'Connell said. As
Canada and other countries convert to chip technology, fraud activity will
increase in the U.S. and any other country that sticks with issuing cards
that only have magnetic stripes, he predicted.
