4 EMV Mythbusters

7/24/2017
The problem with any new technology, especially one that is not only complex but has far reaching business implications, is that it creates a good deal of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Unfortunately, often because of a dearth of technical expertise, technology providers may over-estimate or unnecessarily over-complicate solutions. In this article, Visa aims to debunk some of the misconceptions around EMV.
 
Myth 1: EMV is mandated.
The liability shift is not a mandate. It is simply a process designed to protect the investment of the entity that has moved to chip. Thus if the issuer is magnetic stripe and the acquirer is magnetic stripe there is no liability shift. If the acquirer is chip and the issuer is chip, there is not a liability shift. But chip cards are expensive and if the issuer has invested and the acquirer chooses not to, then liability may apply if the counterfeit fraud could have been prevented by chip acceptance.
 
Myth 2: There are fees/penalties for those who refuse to move to chip.
There are no fees or penalties associated with not moving to chip. As mentioned above it is not a mandate, and there is no compliance program for merchants that choose not to migrate. Similarly, there are no fees or penalties associated with issuers who choose not to migrate. However, counterfeit fraud is very likely to move to those issuer and merchant environments that remain on the magnetic stripe technology only.
 
Myth 3: Operators that are not EMV compliant are seeing a spike in lost and stolen chargeback activity.
Each network maintains different policies and it is important to understand the differences between the policies of each network. Visa never passes along any liability for lost/stolen cards, even if the merchant has not moved to chip.  Thus there is zero impact to lost and stolen on Visa cards, even in non EMV compliant environments.
 
Myth 4: Paying the chargebacks is considerably less than the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars necessary to fully meet the liability shift’s requirements.
EMV migration does not need to be burdensome. While the primary goal of the EMV standards is global interoperability, it does offer a smorgasbord of options, designed for almost every conceivable payment transaction, from a prepaid fleet card used to pump gas in Angola, to an NFC enabled wearable ring that coaxes a Coke from a vending machine at the Olympics. The trick is to pick only the options "from the menu" that match both your specific environment and business needs. In other words, travel light with only the bare necessities and keep deployment and testing costs to a minimum.
 
Visa introduced its Quick Chip solution that streamlines EMV implementation and can attain transaction speeds as fast as one second. At the basic level, it is a real-time authorization, similar to magnetic stripe but with the full strength cryptography of a chip transaction.
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