Canada Is Set to Start a National Rollout of Chip-Equipped Debit Cards

Canada’s financial institutions will start issuing microchip-embedded debit cards by the end of the year, the country’s national electronic funds transfer network said on Tuesday. The rollout of chip cards, which follows a year-long pilot of so-called chip-and-PIN technology in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, area, will over the course of four years convert the nation’s 35 million PIN debit cards to chips from magnetic-stripe technology, according to deadlines set by Interac, the EFT network linking Canada’s financial institutions.

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