Visa International is ready for Y2K

JAKARTA (JP): Visa International assured Indonesian cardholders here on Monday they would have no difficulty using their Visa cards at the turn of the millennium.

Visa Indonesia country manager Ellyana C. Fuad said Visa and its associate member banks and merchants in Indonesia were Year 2000 compliant and were ready to enter the new millennium.

She also said that despite its Y2K compliance, Visa had taken action to anticipate possible disruptions in the new millennium.

Ellyana said if the normal electronic authorization for a transaction could not be made, a voice authorization over the telephone would be performed.

In the event a voice authorization was also impossible, merchants would authorize the transaction manually using a reference list provided by Visa, Ellyana said.

She said special treatment would be given to cardholders at hospitals, hotels and supermarkets, where the credit risk was relatively lower.

Cardholders will be able to make purchases up to a set maximum with no authorization, she said.

"But this kind of arrangement exists between the cardholders and their payment cards' issuing bank," she said.

The head of the Y2K committee at Visa International Asia Pacific, Mark Burbidge, said here that all its member banks in the Asia Pacific had successfully completed their Y2K testing requirements.

The Y2K problem, or the millennium bug, arises because older computers record dates using only the last two digits of the year. If not corrected, such systems could read "2000" as "1900", causing errors or systems to crash when the date rolls over to Jan. 1, 2000. (udi)