EMV-Accepting Merchant Tally at 2 Million: MasterCard

By Kevin Woodward
@DTPaymentNews

Two million U.S. merchants accept EMV chip cards at the checkout almost a year after the card brands made merchants also liable for counterfeit card use. That tally is a 468% increase from Oct. 1, 2015, the date of the liability shift, says MasterCard Inc., which provided the merchant count.

Merchant acceptance of chip cards is one of three necessary components to introducing the technology to the United States. MasterCard also noted progress in chip card issuing and consumer use of the cards in its latest periodic EMV update released Monday.

Of these 2 million merchant locations, most—1.3 million—are regional and local merchants, MasterCard says. These merchants tend to have simpler point-of-sale systems or rely on countertop POS terminals, which are easier to install and activate than products that use complex POS software.

In an effort to boost merchant acceptance, MasterCard in June issued a policy change that provided merchant acquirers with more options to either follow the network’s testing procedures or conduct alternative tests if they wish.

“Acquirers are typically sensitive to the needs of their customers and understand that some merchants—e.g. grocery stores, quick-serve restaurants and the like—would have the ‘need for speed’ at checkout,” Beth Kitchener, MasterCard vice president of communications, tells Digital Transactions News via email. “They’ve been engaged with our dialog and seem supportive of MasterCard offering checkout alternatives.”

MasterCard’s latest fraud data also a shows a 54% decrease in counterfeit fraud costs at U.S. merchants that have completed or are nearing completion of their EMV adoption from April 2015 to April 2016. In July, Visa Inc. reported a 28% drop in counterfeit fraud for the same period.

Consumers also appear to warming up to chip cards. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. consumers commonly use chip cards, MasterCard found in a recent survey of 1,000 individuals. The brand says that is a 38 percentage-point increase from 49% in 2015.

Driving that use is the fact that more banks and credit unions have issued chip cards. As of July, 88% of MasterCard U.S. consumer credit cards have chips. MasterCard would not release figures for the number of EMV debit cards.