October Marks One Year Anniversary For Chip Cards In U.S.

Here, in Canada, the act of inserting (not swiping) a credit card into a POS terminal and punching in a PIN code is nothing new. It feels like we’ve been doing for years…and we have! However, this month marks just one year since our neighbours to the south have enjoyed the use of chip cards. As Charisse Jones of USA Today reports, chip-enabled credit cards have just celebrated their one year anniversary in the United States.

She also points out that thanks to chip cards (or EMV cards), credit card use in the U.S. has spiked. “One year after the U.S. reached a milestone in its switch to credit cards that require a dip instead of a swipe, the ability to use such cards has dramatically increased,” she writes. Jones goes on to note that chip cards have also helped for American merchants to decrease occurrences of fraud.

“Chip-enabled — or EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa — cards are more secure than those with only a magnetic stripe because they generate a unique code for every transaction, making them more difficult to counterfeit,” she informs, “To expedite the switch, a liability shift occurred last Oct. 1 so that U.S. merchants are now held liable for fraudulent transactions made with counterfeit cards if they did not have a chip-reading terminal.”

Visa has reported that fraudulent charges decreased by 47 percent this past May when compared to May of last year. MasterCard has reported that the costs of fraud for U.S. merchants who have adopted chip cards has decreased by 54 percent this past April when compared to April of last year. “Such costs rose 77% among large businesses that had not shifted to chip or were in the early stages of the transition,” says Jones.

Chip cards have caught on quite dramatically in the United States. Jones reports that, as of July, 88 percent of all MasterCard consumer credit cards in the U.S. were chip-enabled. As of August, there were over 363 million chip-enabled Visa cards circulating throughout the States as well. She points out that supermarkets, drugstores and other small to medium-sized businesses make up the majority of the businesses that accept chip cards.

It appears as if chip card use in the United States is trending towards continued growth. Stephanie Ericksen is the vice president of risk and authentication products for Visa. “We’re on pace with what we’ve seen in other countries,” she is quoted as saying, pointing out that Australia, Brazil and Canada each took about two years to get to where 60% of transactions involved chip cards.

“We’re about halfway to that point,” she continues, “And with this being a more complex environment in terms of the number of entities in the payment system…we’re doing really well.” The only negative to come of chip card use in the U.S., says Jones, is longer wait times in line due to terminals that take too long to get up and running. Apparently, our American counterparts still have some kinks to work out with their terminals.

At Canadian POS Corporation, however, we’re very proud to offer Canadian merchants state-of-the-art POS terminals that easily accept chip cards of all kinds. Be sure to give us a call at 1-877-748-2884 to ask us about our Countertop and Wireless models. You may also email us at info@localhost.