South Africa's four big banks are to roll out microchip-embedded smart cards this year in a bid to fight fraud and grow a cashless society - encouraging consumers to make low-fee debit card payments for small purchases.

The country is the first outside Europe - which launched the technology over the past three years - to adopt the smart cards and among the "second wave" of countries, including Australia and New Zealand, to do so.

North American consumers have resisted the smart card as low fraud levels and high card volumes make the conversion expensive and unattractive.

The new cards will contain an "intelligent" microchip that, by 2010, will allow consumers to download movie and sports events tickets from the Internet, pay for public transport and make small purchases at the cost of a few cents. They will offer superior security facilities for Internet transactions.
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