EMV THE NEW NORMAL

Today is October 1 and on my calendar it is marked as the "Liability Shift Date" for the USA and what I see as the new normal in our industry.  For EMV chip cards the merchants are now liable for fraud on a non-chip payment terminal. 

Many merchants have EMV enabled terminals sitting on their counter tops across the country.  However, EMV enabled is not the same as EMV ready.  Enabled is where the whole process starts.  These terminals are capable of processing an EMV transaction but the underlying POS software has not completed the end-to-end certification with the merchant's acquirer/processor to make them EMV ready for usage.  Such terminals are now considered to be non-chip terminals even though they can process all non-EMV chip cards today.  So when you see a device with a taped over chip slot and a hand written note that chip is not working don't be surprised.  Many of the POS vendors simply under estimated the time and the expertise required to modify their software. They have to touch the prompt flows, screen displays, receipt printing, and specific merchant requirements in order achieve the final "gold standard" of EMV card brand certification that makes their merchants EMV ready. 

Consumers will continue to drive demand for EMV acceptance as they become more familiar with dipping their shiny new chip cards this upcoming shopping season at merchant ready locations.  For merchants that thought this day would never come, the time has come to get on with completing the EMV implementation before having to resort to taping over the chip slot.  In the USA, we are not going backwards to just relying on the simple magnetic stripe for electronic payments even though only 27% of merchants are EMV ready on this day.