Surely by now everyone has heard of it. Its going to cost over billions of dollars. Europe and Asia are already onboard. It will forever change the world we now know. And today, October 1st, 2015, is the deadline. Yeah. Now its coming back to you. It is … Wait. You have no idea what I am talking about?
It’s the new EMV credit card. The magnetic strip has been replaced with a digital chip. The 3 letters stand for “Europay, MasterCard, and Visa,” Its purpose is to reduce the $8.6 billion worth of annual card-related fraud in the US.
The Way It Used To Work
The vulnerability in the current method of card transactions is that your card has a static number which is a part of every transaction. Your signature, the other part of the transaction cannot be verified by the seller. Merchants store both pieces of data, which are prone to theft.
The New Dance
The new method will involve sticking your card in a slot (chip instead of swipe) and waiting for the transaction to complete. Transaction data will be dynamic. The cardholder will use a PIN number, But theft of a PIN is much more difficult than a signature (which usually is not verified anyway).
How Will It Affect You
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Liability for fraud shifts from banks to retailers. if they don’t make the switch to EMV by the deadline.
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Your old card will still work, if you have not yet received an EMV card.
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The changes will take a while.
Visa officials say that ‘from experience in other countries, it will take an additional 2-3 years for 60 to 70 percent of transactions to be completed by a chip card and chip terminal, and 4-5 years to reach closer to 90 percent.
So even though the EMV card will move us a little out of our comfort zone, We can take comfort in the fact that it means more protection for the consumer. And learning a new dance is not so bad. We might have to learn to ‘dip’ but we can still do the ‘electric swipe’ for awhile. If you have feelings about it or even don’t care I’d love to hear your comments.
Thanks for the info. I had not heard of this.