Visa says the software needed for the upgrade can be downloaded easily to any chip-compliant payment terminal.
Advertisement
Visa said it has issued roughly 265 million chip-enabled cards to date that can be used at over a million merchants across the country.
That time barrier, as well as the fear that customers might be confused as to how to use a chip card, caused merchants to postpone upgrading their terminals to support the EMV standard over the holidays, traditionally the most important time for businesses.
The move is expected to cut about 18 seconds off transaction times.
It also does not require further testing if the terminal has already been certified as EMV chip compliant. The chip is a security feature embedded in a metallic square on the front of the card that makes it nearly impossible for scammers to break.
Visa on Tuesday also introduced new technology that will allow chip-card holders to spend less time at cash registers. There were subsequent adjustments to the requirements for chip-enabled debit cards and to meet new federal requirements, but merchants still had years to prepare, the banks said.
“We’re seeing EMV is having a positive impact on counterfeit fraud, ” Ericksen says.
“Merchants want a fast, reliable, and secure checkout experience and hassle-free implementation”, saidRichard Char, senior vice president of Business Development, Verifone. Many small, mid-sized and independent retailers still rely on insecure magnetic-stripe cards, despite the warnings of banks and card companies that those cards can be defrauded by criminals who surreptitiously skim customer account information and then use the customer’s credit card information to buy goods illegally.
Fortunately for retailers, Visa’s Quick Chip technology doesn’t require new equipment. That means that if a crook acquired that code, it couldn’t be used to make another purchase.
Despite the promise of Quick Chip, it seems it’s a Visa-only specification at this time.
“What’s particularly appealing about Quick Chip for EMV is that it can be implemented quickly with no impact on Visa’s Level 3 certifications”, said Terrence Crowley, chief executive officer of TranSend, a provider of EMV software for point-of-sale systems.
Advertisement
“We’ve shouted in the dark for a long time”, Mark Horwedel, CEO of Merchant Advisory Group, whose members are large retailers, said on an October conference call with reporters.
