PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J.–The U.S. Payments Forum has released its fall 2016 market snapshot, providing statements on the status of the U.S. chip migration, its impacts on the U.S. market, and upcoming priorities and recently released resources for moving the transition forward.
The U.S. Payments Forum, formerly the EMV Migration Forum, is made up of constituents from the entire payments ecosystem and has been the source for EMV implementation guidance since the start of the migration in 2012.
According to the Forum, approximately a third of U.S. merchants are now enabled to accept chip cards, and about three-quarters of consumers have at least one chip card in their wallet.. As more payment acceptance points, such as in-store point-of-sale terminals, ATMs and automated fuel dispensers become enabled for EMV, fewer opportunities for counterfeit card fraud, the largest source of in-store card fraud in the U.S., will remain, the Payments Forum said.
“The U.S. will need to reach critical mass of chip-on-chip transactions before we will start to see
big drops in counterfeit card fraud,” said Randy Vanderhoof, director of the U.S. Payments Forum, in a statement. “From what our chip-enabled merchants are telling us, chip-on-chip transactions are increasing at a very solid rate and our larger enabled merchants are seeing most of their transactions come in as chip transactions. As merchant enablement continues through the rest of this year and into next year, I expect to see chip-on-chip transactions become a bigger proportion of overall transactions.”
With October a significant month in the U.S. migration to chip payments, and additional important dates on the horizon for the ATM and petroleum industries, the U.S. Payments Forum offered its analysis of the role of these dates in the overall migration journey.
“With this October marking a year since the policy changes for in-store fraud liability went into effect in the U.S., there is a lot of talk around this being the ‘anniversary of the U.S. chip migration,’ but we are in the midst of a large, complex migration that cannot be summarized by a single year’s activity,” added Vanderhoof. “October 2015 was a key date representing fraud liability policy changes for in-store chip card payments, while there are other key dates ahead for the ATM and petroleum industries. It is important for the payments industry to be aware of, and prepare for these dates as we move through the bigger journey towards full enablement of chip technology, while also understanding that this migration will take time—especially considering the size and complexity of the U.S. payments market.”
The Forum reported its ATM Working Committee it has developed a workshop series, “Implementing EMV at the ATM,” to provide guidance on becoming chip-compliant at the ATM, and is based on the Forum’s white paper, “Implementing EMV at the ATM: Requirements and Recommendations for the U.S. ATM Community.”