KUALA LUMPUR, June 13 ― Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) is replacing the signature-based system for credit and debit cards with personal identification number (PIN) verification to strengthen security, a report said.

According to The Star, the exercise has already started to meet the January 2017 deadline by BNM with some eight million credit cardholders receiving their new cards in batches.

As for the 31 million debit card holders, the local daily reported that they would have to go their respective banks to collect their new cards.

“This is a preventive measure as fraudsters will eye the weakest link, which is the old signature-verified system,” Paul Brisk, founding director of payment systems consultant Cotignac, was quoted as saying.

Brisk, whose company reportedly heads the system migration, said the United States has one of the highest number of credit card fraud cases because it still relied on signature verification.

In the report, it said the migration to PIN from signature is part of a worldwide shift which has been implemented in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the Middle East also making the similar move.

Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) executive director Chuah Mei-Lin, in the same article, said the PIN verification would be effective when a card is stolen or lost.

“An EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) global chip helps to reduce fraud as it is very difficult and costly to counterfeit. When a transaction is performed by reading the chip, it produces a unique one-time cryptogram which must then be validated for the transaction to be approved.

“The chip contains a secret unique cryptographic key, and unless that key can be extracted, it isn't possible to copy or clone the chip,” Chuah was quoted as saying.