At midnight on the 31st of December, each and every one of the thousands of Bank of Valletta Electronic Point of Sale Terminals located at business and retail outlets across Malta and Gozo will automatically update themselves to set the euro as the default currency.

Full information about the conversion process for BOV's EPOS network is found in a special edition of the BOVAccept Newsletter just published that is entirely dedicated to the euro changeover. The BOV Accept Newsletter, intended for BOV's Merchant customers who accept payments by credit and debit cards through their Electronic Point of Sale terminals, highlights various issues and makes useful recommendations regarding the procedures to be adopted by merchants during the changeover period.

"Bank of Valletta has taken all the necessary steps to ensure that the migration to the euro is straightforward and transparent both for merchants as well as for cardholders," said John Pollacco, Head of Card Services at Bank of Valletta.

"Before initialising the automatic conversion process, the terminal will check for any transactions that have previously been carried out in Maltese lira and which would have not yet been settled. These will be automatically transmitted and credited in euro given that the conversion process of the Maltese lira accounts on the local banking systems would have started in the early afternoon of 31st December 2007. The POS will then update the currency symbol on the display and chit, replacing the Maltese lira sign with the euro currency symbol. The terminal will also print a notice stating that the conversion has been successfully made," explained Mr. Pollacco.

Mr Pollacco added: "Merchants need not perform any functions from their end since the update will be fully automated. We encourage all merchants to accept card payments instead of cash payments, particularly during the conversion period, since this will facilitate the conversion process."
Mr Pollacco added that merchants who accept card payments are eliminating the need to physically go to the Bank to exchange or deposit cash since card payments are directly credited to the merchant's account which will, in turn, be automatically converted to Euro on the 1st January 2008.

As the Official Partner Bank of the National Euro Changeover Committee, Bank of Valletta has been implementing a strong information and education campaign. The launch of the special issue of the 'BOVAccept Newsletter' is another initiative that is targeted to a specific customer group.

Merchant customers who require further details regarding the changeover process are to call the BOV Merchant's Help Desk on 2124 4585.