More people are now able to make a credit card payment using a personal identification number (Pin) than signing a receipt, the Irish Payment Services Organisation (Ipso) said yesterday.

More than one million chip-and-Pin cards are in circulation and about 90 per cent of the payments infrastructure is in place, it said.

The organisation said the Irish chip-and-Pin programme, which is designed to curb counterfeit card fraud, was on target to be completed by the end of the year, ahead of the UK programme.

This is important because Ipso believes that criminal gangs operating card fraud schemes in the UK could migrate here if chip and Pin succeeds in making counterfeit fraud there more difficult.

Card fraud cost the UK industry €750 million in 2004 and is estimated to cost the industry here about €10 million each year.

"It won't take much of the €750 million fraud to come over from the UK to cause us problems," Ipso chip and Pin programme manager Barry O'Mahony said.

Around 34,000 of the 37,000 bank-owned payment terminals are in place, however Ipso does not have figures on the progress of retailers - usually larger businesses - who own their own terminals as part of integrated checkout systems.

Some 90 per cent of credit cards will be reissued by card providers before September, while most debit cards are expected to be chip-and-Pin enabled by November.

Over time, it will become more difficult for holders of the cards who forget their Pin to sign for goods and services, Ipso warned.

The programme is estimated to cost the card payments industry here €100 million.