[Nursie]

EMV cards had been distributed to customers since the late 90s.

I would guess the banks had been rolling out EMV capable ATMs well before 2003. Retail level EMV may have taken two years from trial to liability swith. Infrastructure changes would have pre-dated that by years.

I know EMV cards had been distributed to customers since the late 90s because I used to use mine for testing while I developed the software I wrote that ran several of the retailer systems in that Northampton trial :)