Visa International is ready for Y2K

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)