What is an EMV chip card?

Nowadays, banking operations are heavily dependent on information technology. All your money is kept in the vault and you will use bank-provided tools like your bank card to control your cash flow. This does not mean that your money will be 100% protected against theft, especially when the loss of money due to the theft of information on the card has caused a lot of confusion. To prevent this, EMV chip card developed by 3 organizations MasterCard, Visa and Europay was born as an optimal security solution for your bank card.

What is an EMV chip?

The EMV chip is an electronic chip with a processor like a computer with high technology, capable of storing and encrypting information with high security. Cards equipped with EMV chip will have a small metal square right above the card number, which is the EMV chip. Currently, EMV is the international standard for bank cards.

Why is the EMV chip card safer than traditional bank card?

To understand why EMV chip cards are more secure than traditional magnetic cards, you need to understand how these two cards work.
The traditional magnetic card widely used in Vietnam contains all of your permanent information under the black magnetic strip. Anyone who can access the magnetic card’s data will get your sensitive information and make the purchase as usual. They can do it over and over again because the information on the magnetic card is fixed. This makes it easy to steal money from magnetic cards.

In contrast to magnetic cards, each time an EMV chip card is used for payment, the EMV chip generates a unique transaction code that is never repeated. In case your card is stolen from a certain store, the fake card will never work because the stolen transaction code will not be used again, the card will be rejected.

In order for a transaction on EMV card to be successful, you will have to undergo complicated 2-way confirmation from the receiving device to the payment bank, Mastercard / Visa and issuing bank. Once licensed by all the organizations involved, the transaction is successful.
It is for these reasons that using EMV card is very safe, especially when you use it abroad.

Currently, banks around the world are switching to EMV chip cards to ensure cardholders’ safety, to avoid counterfeiting and theft of money.

Which bank is providing EMV chip card?

Besides international banks such as ANZ, HSBC, Citibank, … Vietnamese banks are also on the move to convert entirely to EMV cards. There are many major banks introducing international credit and debit cards with advanced EMV chips such as VIB, Vietinbank, Vietcombank, Techcombank, ACB, Sacombank, Timo Plus Digital bank with Timo Plus Visa Credit card, … In the future, every bank must convert to Chip cards for the security and safety of customers.

Hopefully, with the above article, you have a better understanding of the bank card you currently or about to own. If you intend to make a Mastercard / Visa card, choose a card with EMV for the greatest peace of mind!