Mr. Martin Williamson

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  www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/16/2007    Last Visited: 9/16/2007  

  Recently, Martin Williamson, a top executive of Arab Financial Services, a leading regional provider of e-payments and consumer finance outsourcing, had told Gulf Times that non-compliance of EMV standards risked the banks of taking the onus on them for liabilities due to card fraud.He pointed out that smart cards with an integrated circuit or microchip carried out a series of pre-programmed commands when inserted into a terminal.
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  Recently, Martin Williamson, a top executive of Arab Financial Services, a leading regional provider of e-payments and consumer finance outsourcing, had told Gulf Times that non-compliance of EMV standards risked the banks of taking the onus on them for liabilities due to card fraud.He pointed out that smart cards with an integrated circuit or microchip carried out a series of pre-programmed commands when inserted into a terminal.

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  Appointments - Jobs, positions and promotions in Dubai... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/1/2006    Last Visited: 6/10/2006  

  Martin WilliamsonAFS appoints new Head of Business Development
  
  AFS has appointed Mr. Martin Williamson as the new Head of Business Development for the organization.

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  Archives | Idaho Debt Consolidation - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 1/20/2007  

  AME Info - (L-R): Martin Williamson, Head of Business Development, Arab Financial Services (AFS); Gary Ceaplen, Card Development Manager, Ahli United Bank and Alan Perkins, Head of Fraud, Ahli United Bank.

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  Eontec EJB Multi-Channel Java Banking Solutions for... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/18/2001    Last Visited: 10/9/2003  

  According to Martin Williamson, Eontec's vice-president of international sales, "We are finding that many of the large financial institutions in the Benelux region are committed to a long-term multi-channel strategy; this makes BankFrame's architecture and content a uniquely attractive proposition for them."
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  As such, it is important to leverage the expertise that exists in a specific location," said Martin Williamson.

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  GULF MANAGERS - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/18/2006    Last Visited: 8/9/2008  

  AFS has appointed Mr. Martin Williamson as the new Head of Business Development for the organization.Martin brings with him a wealth of international knowledge gained over his 20 year career in leading successful sales teams especially in the payment industry.This enables the organization to continue building a successful business development team.Mr. Rasool Hujair commented, "In his role as the Head of Business Development, Martin will lead the company's efforts in achieving one of our major long term strategic initiatives of the company, by building a strong brand backed by robust sales and marketing capabilities.
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  Martin held a number of senior management positions including Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Eontec, Sales Director at ACI Worldwide and General Manager at NBS International.Having worked with banks, retailers and processing companies in over 50 countries, he brings valuable international experience to AFS.Gulfmanagers We're delighted to appoint Martin to this position.With his extensive investment experience and leadership abilities demonstrated over the course of his 20-years career, we are confident that he will apply the same passion and vision to his new role as Head of our Business Development.www.gulfmanagers.com

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  Gulf Daily News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/27/2006    Last Visited: 8/27/2006  

  Institutions across the Middle East region are taking preventative measures, such as moving away from cards with magnetic strips towards chip-based technology, says Bahrain-based Arab Financial Services (AFS) head of business development Martin Williamson.
  
  But many other security systems such as fraud monitoring services and SMS transaction alerts are not being fully utilised, because of a reluctance to pay the implementation costs, he said.
  
  AFS is the largest payment card processor in the Middle East and North Africa region and more than 50 banks are connected to its services, including nine in Bahrain.
  
  "A number of banks do adopt this technology and some of them have SMS alert," said Mr Williamson.
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  But while technology improves to help prevent fraud from occurring, the problem will never be eliminated," said Mr Williamson.
  
  "It will not cancel fraud, it will reduce it in card-present transactions and what will happen is that when chip technology is rolled out it will move fraud to card-not-present transactions, typically the Internet.
  
  "The measures we have in place allow at least one transaction to occur, so we cannot eliminate it 100 per cent, but we can prevent it raking up to a very high value."
  
  Mr Williamson advised customers to keep every receipt and check it against their bank statements, never disclose their pin to anyone or let their card out of their sight when paying bills in places like restaurants.

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  Gulf Daily News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/18/2006    Last Visited: 4/18/2006  

  MANAMA: Bahrain-based Arab Financial Services (AFS) has appointed Martin Williamson as its new head of business development."Mr Williamson will lead the company's efforts in achieving one of our major long term strategic initiatives of the company, by building a strong brand backed by robust sales and marketing capabilities," said chief executive officer Rasool Hujair.
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  Mr Williamson held a number of senior management positions including sales and marketing vice-president at Eontec, sales director at ACI Worldwide and general manager at NBS International.

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  Gulf Daily News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/16/2007    Last Visited: 1/16/2007  

  Arab Financial Services head of business development Martin Williamson, said the new credit card was the latest in card technology.

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  Gulf Daily News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/12/2007    Last Visited: 2/12/2007  

  "We are really looking forward to MEFTEC 2007, the event last year was very well attended with senior delegates from most of the major financial institutions and key technology suppliers in the region," AFS business development head Martin Williamson said.

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  Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/14/2006    Last Visited: 6/14/2006  

  Martin Williamson
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  Martin Williamson, head of business development at Arab Financial Services (AFS), a leading regional provider of e-payments and consumer finance outsourcing, said yesterday chip cards on the Dynamic Data Authentification (DDA) technology could help banks effectively combat card frauds.While migration to Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) standards is an absolute requirement for banks including those in Qatar, the selection of the right kind of EMV technology is equally important, he emphasised.
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  There are two chip technologies available now, Williamson stressed.They are Static Data Authentification (SDA) and Dynamic Data Authentification (DDA).SDA is inexpensive when compared with DDA, but is not as "secure" as the latter.Higher incidence of frauds in major markets including the UK are now prompting card acquirers and issuers to deploy DDA instead of SDA.However, the DDA technology would give the optimum results only if the transactions were done online, Williamson said."There is a definite risk in interrogating cards offline.If cards work offline, they can be cloned.It is very dangerous.But since there is a continuous exchange of data between the card and the host in the online mode, there are no possibilities of cloning here," he told Gulf Times.Williamson said Saudi Arabia recently mandated online-based DDA smart cards."I believe the way forward is online based DDA smart cards, though the technology is expensive when compared to SDA cards.Sooner than later the banks in Qatar and elsewhere will get into the system," he opined.Asked why some banks still honoured offline transactions he said it was probably because of the delay in effecting online transactions.In some places online transactions are authenticated on phone.And it takes about 20 seconds for authentification."In my view it is too long", he said.Williamson said he was not quite sure whether all Qatar-based banks have switched over from the magnetic stripe cards to smart cards by January 31.Non-compliance of EMV standards risks the banks of taking the onus on them for liabilities due to card fraud.Fortunately, the Gulf region has not seen major card frauds so far."However, with the Gulf economies booming and transactions using both credit and debit cards increasing, it is quite likely we see more frauds in the GCC region.Hence we need to be very cautious," he pointed out.Williamson was in Doha yesterday to lead a one-day seminar on EMV specifications at the Four Seasons.
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  Martin Williamson
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  Martin Williamson, head of business development at Arab Financial Services (AFS), a leading regional provider of e-payments and consumer finance outsourcing, said yesterday chip cards on the Dynamic Data Authentification (DDA) technology could help banks effectively combat card frauds.While migration to Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) standards is an absolute requirement for banks including those in Qatar, the selection of the right kind of EMV technology is equally important, he emphasised.
  ...
  There are two chip technologies available now, Williamson stressed.They are Static Data Authentification (SDA) and Dynamic Data Authentification (DDA).SDA is inexpensive when compared with DDA, but is not as "secure" as the latter.Higher incidence of frauds in major markets including the UK are now prompting card acquirers and issuers to deploy DDA instead of SDA.However, the DDA technology would give the optimum results only if the transactions were done online, Williamson said."There is a definite risk in interrogating cards offline.If cards work offline, they can be cloned.It is very dangerous.But since there is a continuous exchange of data between the card and the host in the online mode, there are no possibilities of cloning here," he told Gulf Times.Williamson said Saudi Arabia recently mandated online-based DDA smart cards."I believe the way forward is online based DDA smart cards, though the technology is expensive when compared to SDA cards.Sooner than later the banks in Qatar and elsewhere will get into the system," he opined.Asked why some banks still honoured offline transactions he said it was probably because of the delay in effecting online transactions.In some places online transactions are authenticated on phone.And it takes about 20 seconds for authentification."In my view it is too long", he said.Williamson said he was not quite sure whether all Qatar-based banks have switched over from the magnetic stripe cards to smart cards by January 31.Non-compliance of EMV standards risks the banks of taking the onus on them for liabilities due to card fraud.Fortunately, the Gulf region has not seen major card frauds so far."However, with the Gulf economies booming and transactions using both credit and debit cards increasing, it is quite likely we see more frauds in the GCC region.Hence we need to be very cautious," he pointed out.Williamson was in Doha yesterday to lead a one-day seminar on EMV specifications at the Four Seasons.

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