RAMALLAH,
May 18, 2015 (WAFA) – Governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) Jihad Al-Wazir
announced on Sunday the launching of the first phase of the ATM/POS National
Switch.
Bank
of Palestine, Bank of Jordan, and Cairo Amman Bank were connected through the
PMA National Switch at this stage. The customers of these banks will be able to
use the ATM machines of the mentioned banks with affordable transaction fees,
said the PMA in a press release.
Alwazir
said that the National Switch is considered a cornerstone for the Electronic
Retail Payments in Palestine. The implementation of the National Switch is part
of PMA’s strategy in electronic retail payments and the reduction of the use of
cash and cheques in order to minimize the risk of the use of cash and other
paper based payment instruments.
He
emphasized that launching this system will encourage the banks to issue more
debit and prepaid cards, and will also encourage the distribution of the point
of sale machines.
Meanwhile,
the PMA said it will also clear and settle the transactions on the systems
hosted in the PMA using the PMA RTGS system (Buraq).
PMA
is also planning to continue working with the remaining banks to mandatory
connect the national switch by the end of the third quarter of 2015, and also
the inclusion of new payment services, it said.
The
implementation of the switch will increase access to banking services,
especially in rural areas which will improve banking services and comply with
PMA’s financial inclusion strategy.
Last
week, the PMA created the PMA LMK (Local Master Key) on HSM (Hardware Security
Modules) for the national switch. It also used this key to generate the related
encryption keys for the member banks. PMA said it created the LMK according to
the international best practices for creating such keys in an official ceremony
attended by internal and external witnesses from public and private sectors.
The witnesses also included representatives from PMA management, BPC Banking
Technologies, and internal and external auditors.
M.N./T.R.
