He was addressing a press conference on Thursday over the adoption of first EMV, chip credit card along with James Murray, executive vice-president, Visa International and Santanu Mukarjee, country manager, South Asia Visa International.

The EMV is the global standard for chip-based payment transactions and is the future of payments. The UBL chip credit cardholders will be benefiting from greater payment options and services, besides enhanced security, protection and convenience.

The UBL President said: "As the first bank in Pakistan to adopt the global EMV programme, UBL is delighted to be working with Visa International in this endeavour.

This move is very significant for us as it provides unending opportunities to our customers. All of UBL's products and services are being developed keeping in view the increased level of consumer awareness due to increased accessibility of information and, hence, the demand for better products and services with options."

The new futuristic chip enabled UBL credit card will offer special exciting features to customers combined with greater security and protection.

Given the global recognition of the Visa brand and EMV chip technology, the UBL can now provide its customers with a product based on value and options to enhance their lifestyle.

Commenting on the launch, Santanu Mukarjee said: "Globally, we have found that consumers would like to consolidate information on their payment cards to enhance their lifestyle.

Smart cards provide banks the opportunity to combine multiple applications onto a single chip. With the growth in e-commerce and in-commerce, Visa's smart card programmes can meet the evolving needs of consumers for greater convenience, control and highly personalized services.

"we are delighted that Pakistan joins rest of the Asia Pacific region in adopting and implementing EMV smart card programmes and the UBL being the first to roll out Visa's EMV chip programme in South Asia," he added.

The new UBL ship credit card will be a payment card embedded with a microchip. The embedded chip will store encrypted customer information and will be able to combine multiple functions and applications from different industries such as loyalty or discount points, personal identification, transit or health information and internet access. EMV is the global interoperable standard for chip-based payment card transactions. Chip cards offer new payment options and services, greater security and more convenience and choice compared to traditional magnetic stripe cards.

Chip cards provide additional levels of security as they perform secure authentication using encrypted data.