You may remember last year when new rules went into place requiring all credit cards in the U.S. to be equipped with an EMV chip.
The goal of the EMV card is to make it much more difficult for fraudsters to create fake credit cards.
Credit card companies had until October 1 to send customers the new card. If they didn’t, they would be held financially responsible for any fraud committed on a customer’s card.
Merchants were also required to replace their store’s processing machines with readers able to accept the new card. If not, they would be held financially liable for any fraud committed.
The EMV card involves a whole new way of using your credit card. Instead of swiping, you’ll actually have to dip your card into the processor. The card will sit there for several seconds and then prompt you to remove the card once the transaction has been completed.
If you did not receive a new credit card, contact your credit card company. They will likely send your the card via mail.
The problem with the EMV cards is that the technology doesn’t extend to online purchases. There is concern that fraudsters may direct their focus to targeting online shoppers. This is why it’s even more important than ever to change your passwords and monitor your credit card statements frequently. With digital sales becoming a more popular outlet for shoppers, as opposed to brick-and-mortar stores, the risk for fraud online may have increased as a result of the new EMV technology that applies to physical cards.
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Also dipping into an EMV reader can take up to 20 seconds to process, so much better to activate Apple Pay or Android Pay to pay “tap” by NFC
The problem I see now is that many merchants either don’t have chip readers or don’t have their chip readers enabled yet. These merchants apparently don’t see enough value in making the switch compared with taking on full financial responsibility for fraud.
@Jon. The problem is much deeper than that. As a small merchant, we moved heaven and earth to be ready by Oct 1. Our merchant services provider (credit card processor) only had one terminal ready by that date, and only had it readied on Sep 18. We bought those terminals (we felt we had no choice), and needed to reprogram our point of sale software, which we completed on time.
However, it no longer takes debit cards, so they are having (still to this day) to be charged as credit cards, thus increasing substantially our processing costs. Also, the one machine which we could obtain was not enabled for touch – we could have had touch, or we could have had emv enabled, but not both, and we could not have had two machines on one till.
Finally, the credit card companies seem to have missed the point. For fraud protection you need the chip to be used with a PIN – using it with a signature is only half the battle. But they haven’t enabled that.
As Visa and Mastercard have managed this in pretty well every Western country for the last 15 years, I really cannot understand why they find it so difficult here.
@Wandering Entrepreneur. Everywhere else, the cards also have NFC chips in them, which is even faster than Apple or Android. But the majority of ours seem to have missed out the chips. Also, for sensible fraud reasons, NFC is only enabled up to a certain dollar value.
I find it ironic that our local post office still hasn’t enabled the chip slot. As a sorta govt type place you think they’d be first to get this set up.
My club Carlson card still doesn’t have the chip but guess what, it worked fine in Ireland last week. Although I did pay a foreign transaction fee (don’t ask why I didn’t use one of my many other cards).
we had no trouble with our cards but as soon as we got the chips we were hacked!!!!!and they are not usable in EU