Just about 120 days after its announcement and hailed as the first EMV card in Malaysia, the SCB Buy'N'Fly Visa card is pronounced DEAD!

In a statement to all card members, Malaysia Airlines, the loyalty programme owner, stressed its efforts to turn around the company and continues to reassess its business strategies to focus on core airline business and hence, decided to cease the operations of the Buy'N'Fly programme.

The issuing bank, Standard Chartered Bank, refused to comment on the demise of its card. Instead, its Head of Card Centre, Jade Lee, tried to give hopes to the market by announcing that its new, code name 'Manhattan', chip programme will be launched in July 2002.

Visa's Country Manager for Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Philippines and Guam, June Seah, said during the launch, "We are delighted that SCB Malaysia has taken the lead to migrate to EMV. As the worldwide leader in payment services, Visa is committed to ensure that new technologies continue to provide opportunities for our member banks such as SCB to strengthen their customer loyalty while reducing fraudulent transactions."

Now that the card is dead, she replied, "Visa has worked with SCB to migrate its magnetic stripe payment cards to EMV chip compliance by laying the foundation for EMV cards upon which loyalty programmes and other value-enhancing applications can be added if deemed necessary. Loyalty programmes, such as Buy 'N’ Fly, which member banks employ as differentiating tools to meet customers' needs, vary and change over time to suit market demands. What remains constant and of critical importance, is Visa's drive to convert and migrate the existing card portfolio to EMV chip compliant status.

When asked to comment, MasterCard Asia Pacific's Vice President on Advanced Payment Systems, Shuan Ghaidan said, "Chip cards provide the perfect opportunity for partnerships if done correctly. Our experiences in Korea, where we partnered with Mondex, Transport and Telcos to issue 100,000's of cards and Taiwan where we have issued numerous chip payment programmes with retail, lottery and technology partners totalling half a million cards this year alone; show how effective chip cards can be when implemented in the right way."

He also compared that, "Far from dying, our chip card programmes are thriving - proof of the superiority of our strategy and implementation experience. In Malaysia we are very confident that the excellent programmes we are introducing to the market this year will continue our leadership in this area."

Can the new Bank Islam's EMV MasterCard, launched on July 23, survives its first 120 days or will it share the same destiny as SCB's EMV Visa card? The question remains the choice of partners selected for co-branding with the issuing bank. EMV migration is no longer a technical or cost issue, instead, a business opportunity where the right partners become the vital factor for the success of the programme.

So far, 94% polled here believe that Asia is ready for EMV. Will this remain after this?