EMV, which stands for Europay, Mastercard and Visa, is the new global standard for credit card security coming about in October of 2015. After numerous large scale data breaches and rapidly escalating incidents of counterfeit cards, U.S. credit card issuers are transferring to this new technology to help protect consumers as well as reduce the costs of fraudulent transactions.
The new technology involves both a card with a computer chip embedded in it, and new equipment used to authenticate chip-card transactions. Consumers will receive and need to activate new cards and learn the new payment processes. The new cards will provide greater protection against fraud. Merchants will need to upgrade their current credit card readers to the new EMV readers to take full advantage of the fraud protection offered by them.
Each EMV card has a computer chip instead of the traditional magnetic stripe. Unlike magnetic-stripe cards, every time an EMV card is used for payment, the card chip creates a unique transaction code that cannot be used again, making replication useless. The new cards require a different card reader and a slightly different process to register the card for a transaction. Although the first new EMV cards will be equipped with both the computer chip technology and the traditional magnetic stripe to help smooth the transition while merchants adjust and purchase new equipment to read the new cards.
Very few point-of-sale systems can accept debit EMV in the U.S. right now and the upgrade specs were issued only late last year. Many processors charge up to $500 for a new card reader. Harbortouch America can help with EMV compliant card readers, free with any new merchant POS system account.