Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news

Shanghai will lead the country in revamping existing bankcards to EMV-compliant smart cards in a program to improve financial security, the city government announced at yesterday's bank meeting.
Pudong is the pilot area for testing the program in the city.
EMV is a standard for the inter-operation of integrated circuit cards ("Chip cards") and IC-capable POS terminals, for the authentication of credit and debit card payments. 'EMV' is an acronym of "Europay MasterCard VISA", the three companies which originally cooperated to develop the standard.
China initiated the EMV program in the wake of a large-scale bankcard data leak reported in June, involving 40 million cardholders in the United States, officials said.  It chose Shanghai to pioneer the revamp because the city has the highest bankcard usage in the country.
Banking experts pointed out that the up-grade is a huge and complicated project involving all financial parties ranging from individuals to banks, stores, restaurants and hotels. Therefore, it will be costly, they noted, revealing that it will cost over 100 million yuan (US$12 million) to upgrade the 60 percent of the city's banking computer systems involved.
As revealed at yesterday's meeting, there were more than 4,300 ATM terminals and 50,000 POS terminals in Shanghai as of last November.