As most businesses know by now, the major card networks have established a shift in liability effective October 1, 2015. As of that date, whichever party (the card issuer or the merchant) does not EMV-chip capabilities will be responsible for counterfeit fraud in a card-present transaction. ATM’s and unattended fuel pumps have an extra two years to achieve compliance.
Card issuers have been issuing millions of chip cards and it is expected that a majority of cards in circulation by October 1, 2015 will have EMV-chips embedded.
Many businesses have been preparing by upgrading their point-of-sale hardware and software to process EMV-chip transactions. Businesses with integrated POS systems will have to upgrade their POS system and will likely have to add a peripheral device that can read the chip. Businesses with stand-alone credit card devices are relatively easy to upgrade and should be doing that over the summer in advance of the October date.
This is also an ideal time to insure PIN debit and NFC contactless (i.e. ApplePay) acceptance is in place. The conversion to EMV-chip is worth the modest expense and will save money in the long-run. Hopefully, the card networks will eventually enable PIN usage for credit card transactions, which will bring even more security to the payment transaction.