Banks, retailers and card companies in Northampton are about to embark on interparticipant testing of cards and merchant terminals ahead of the first public trials for the UK's chip and PIN conversion programme.
The programme requires plastic card transactions to be verified by keying in a personal identification number (PIN) instead of signature by 2005 in an effort to cut down on card fraud at the point-of-sale.
With individual technology tests more or less complete, banks, retailers, building societies and card companies are preparing to undergo interparticipant testing - where cards and retail point of sale terminals from different organisations are tested together. Once this stage is complete, official certification is required for participants before the systems go live.
Sandra Quinn from the chip and PIN programme comments: "The testing is going well but it is a complex process with a high degree of interdependence between organisations. This is a groundbreaking project which will ultimately affect more than 40 million cardholders."
The Northampton public trial is scheduled to start in the Spring 2003. A further announcement including the first group of participants in the public trial will be made during the week of 7 April 2003, says Quinn.