This Wednesday, June 10, 2015 photo shows a chip-based credit card, in Philadelphia.
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Mastercard announced recently that 80 percent of its USA consumer credit cards have chips, which represents an 88 percent increase in chip card adoption since the October 1, 2015 liability shift started to bring EMV-secured payments to the U.S. Many retailers are still working to upgrade payment machines with the latest security features, such as transaction encryption, so many credit cards are still at risk.
Researchers say the concern is over the card’s magnetic strip which is meant to tell a payment machine to use the chip. This lets hackers gain access to credit cards, just like they did before the chip card roll out. The National Retail Federation has criticized the upgrade, which is estimated to have cost American retailers about $25 billion. They’re not encrypting the transaction.
But despite a deadline to retailers to have them installed and running by last October, less than half of stores are using the chip card readers.
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Experts said customers should always monitor their online credit card statements and use their phone or smartwatch to pay if possible.
