Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
After years of hesitation and handwringing, the U.S. payments market is finally moving on to the EMV chip card standard that’s long been in effect in nearly all first-world countries.
Under policies adopted by the major card networks, as of Oct. 1 the acquirer will assume fraud responsibility if its merchant isn’t EMV-compliant. That loss, if any, will of course get passed along to the merchant.
This so-called liability shift has set in motion one of the most sweeping nationwide reboots ever seen in the payments business, involving hundreds of thousands of processors, acquirers, issuers, networks, and retail companies. It has forced the industry to wrangle not only with huge questions of cost, but also technical complexities never faced before—some of them unique to the U.S. market.
One example: EMV chip cards, which rely on a 20-year-old technology standard, weren’t designed to comply with the routing requirements of the Durbin Amendment. So debit networks, issuers, and processors have had to scramble to fashion agreements allowing merchants to have a choice of unrelated networks for routing EMV debit card transactions, as mandated by Durbin.
But the industry is making progress. How much? What will it take to get everyone on board in the time remaining until Oct. 1? And what about the situation after the liability shift? What will happen then? In the stories that follow, Digital Transactions reports on these and other pressing questions concerning the great EMV migration.
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