Overheard: Chip and pin not failsafe

Criminals are able to clone magnetic strips much more easily than chips, using skimming machines that they attach to ATM machines. Skimmers use a camera to record the keypad as the pin is entered, and a card reader to record the card’s information. Danny Bradbury, Has chip-and-pin failed to foil fraudsters?

The UK payments association Apacs confirms that chip-and-pin ATMs will sometimes fall back to exclusively reading the magnetic strip traditionally used to verify a card. That is necessary to support cards used by visitors from countries like the US, where chips in cards and readers are not mandatory.