By Lisa Hochgraf
Credit union members are starting to get EMV "chip" cards in the mail. Big merchants are placing point-of-sale readers that can handle the new cards in many of their locations, but not planning to actually enable this functionality until Oct. 1. These are the real-life signs that players in the world of EMV cards are indeed getting ready for the liability shift planned for Oct. 1 by the “Network of Four” (MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and Visa) for domestic and cross-border counterfeit card-present point-of-sale transactions. Once the shift takes place, liability for card fraud will be assessed to the party that did not enable the EMV transaction. At the yesterday, Terence Roche made some educated predictions about what players will have done by the deadline. Principal of CUES Supplier member and strategic provider , Scottsdale, Ariz., Roche said that 79 percent of issuers are expected to have replaced magnetic stripe-only cards with EMV cards by Oct. 1. In all, 575 million EMV cards are expected to be issued this year. Roche also pointed to data showing that EMV/near-field communication will be installed at over 65 percent of all POS systems in time to be enabled on the liability shift date. "claims that it will take until 2018-2019 to finalize NFC/EMV deployment for merchants," Roche added. "The national merchants are going to be ready for October, but it will take a while for small business merchants to upgrade." And when will the EMV PIN network be ready? "This is all over the board from December through May," Roche said. How should CUs approach EMV implementation? Roche offered this guidance: Consider the cost of cards, marketing materials, implementation, and ongoing cost increases. Planning can be done as part of the natural card expiration cycle or a full blown reissue or anything in between. The card processor and PIN networks must all be certified and support EMV. All are on their own timeline, but generally speaking all will be certified soon. There are many options available! The Future of Payments: Scenarios for Credit Unions 2018
