Ms Niamh O'Donoghue:

That is the case in terms of the card itself, which has a magnetic stripe on the back and a chip on the front. People will be familiar with such features. The chip is where the future is at. The magnetic stripe is very much a symptom of the older technology used to access payments, etc. In the course of the development of the card, we upgraded the magnetic stripe because the technology enabled us to do so. This was one of the additional costs. The most critical element of future-proofing relates to the use of the data that underpins the card to allow people to verify their identity when they are accessing online services. It is future-proofed to that extent. We have built the infrastructure to allow us to do that. Hopefully that is future-proofing us, certainly for a while.