Bank of Ireland have confirmed that they will be replacing Laser cards with Visa Debit Cards. BOI will begin the rollout of 100 million new Visa Debit Cards to all of their customers in the second half of 2011. The introduction of the new cards will provide BOI customers with significantly more options for online purchases and withdrawing cash and making payments worldwide. Laser card is generally not accepted as an online payment method outside of Ireland.

"Visa Debit will allow our customers to complete more transactions electronically given its global acceptance across more than 200 countries", said Quentin Teggin, head of Consumer Segments at Bank of Ireland.

BOI customers will also be able to enroll in the Verified By Visa (3D Secure) scheme, something with was lacking for online laser card transactions. At present there are almost three million Laser cards in circulation in Ireland. The card type accounts for almost 17 million transactions per month.

BOI dropping Laser will be a big loss to Laser and it leaves just AIB, National Irish Bank and EBS as the only Laser issuers in Ireland. Una Dylan, a spokeswoman for Laser, said the decision would mean the company would need to consider its future.

Dave

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It has emerged today that 120,000 Bank of Ireland customers were double-charged for laser transactions over the weekend. The initial report in the Irish Independent suggested that up to 120,000 customers had been overcharged. Bank of Ireland has issued a statement confirming the issue occurred and that it had been resolved last night. They have not commented on the amount of money or the numbers of customers involved. Nor have they provided details of how the problem occurred or at what point it was identified.

A Google search for Bank of Ireland double charging brings you to a Blog post on tuppenceworth.ie from May 2009. Here the author is talking about double charges on their account for laser card transactions. According to the Blog post Bank of Ireland said they changed their computer systems recently which resulted in some laser card transactions being applied twice. Looks like they never fixed the problem!

Dave

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