Friday, July 25, 2014

Changes to credit cards and acceptance methods on the horizon


Your credit cards will be changing soon to incorporate newer, fraud prevention features. EMV, or "chip and PIN" cards will begin replacing the magnetic stripe cards that American consumers use. Over time, this may begin to affect how payments are accepted at City facilities.  Here's a heads up from Fox Business:
The nationwide shift to EMV has begun.

EMV -- which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa -- is a global standard for cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions.

In the wake of numerous large-scale data breaches and increasing rates of counterfeit card fraud, U.S. card issuers are migrating to this new technology to protect consumers and reduce the costs of fraud.

"These new and improved cards are being deployed to improve payment security, making it more difficult for fraudsters to successfully counterfeit cards," says Julie Conroy, research director for retail banking at Aite Group, a financial industry research company. "It's an important step forward."

For merchants and financial institutions, the switch to EMV means adding new in-store technology and internal processing systems, and complying with new liability rules. For consumers, it means activating new cards and learning new payment processes.

Most of all, it means greater protection against fraud. The EMV "ship has sailed" in the U.S., according to Martin Ferenczi, president of Oberthur Technologies, the leading global EMV product and service provider. Consumers will receive their first chip-card soon, if they have not already.

"I predict that by the end of this year, every household will have at least one card with a chip," he says.

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