Gulf Business Magazine Subscribe to Gulf Business and receive 1,000 FREE Skywards Miles, and the chance to win a further 100,000 in our quarterly draw. Charles Schwab delayed by 20 mins.
Nobody likes to visit a bank.
ABN-AMRO's Visa smart cards mark the beginning of the Gulf's propulsion into a brave new world of intelligent chip cards which will go way beyond the capabilities of exisiting credit, cash and debit cards, giving banks another channel to control your funds. A smart card has chip technology embedded on the face of the card while an ordinary credit or cash card comes with a magnetic strip. The microchip is intelligent as it can compute and store much more information, which opens up endless possibilities. The chip can also replicate what is stored in the magnetic stripe, so it can work just as well as a basic card. It appears that smart card technology has caught consumers and banks in the Gulf by surprise.