Retailers Lag in EMV Card Compliance: Survey

Four of 10 retailers have not upgraded the payment terminals in any of their stores to accept the new smart-chip credit cards. Meanwhile, many consumers are not even familiar with Europay Mastercard Visa (EMV) payment technology.

Those are some of the startling results of a survey of retailers and consumers by CardHub, a website reporting on credit, prepaid and gift cards.

Here are the key results of the 2016 EMV Adoption Survey:

• 42% of retailers have not updated the terminals in any of their stores.
• 43% of retailers that have experienced data breaches in the past five years have not updated their point of sale terminals.
• 56% of people don’t care if a retailer’s payment terminal is chip-enabled.
• 41% of people say they don’t have (or don’t know if they have) a smart-chip credit card.
• 62% of people don’t understand the difference between major card security standards.
• 41% of people falsely believe debit cards protect them from fraud better than credit cards.

CardHub conducted its national survey of 55 major retailers and 1,000 individuals in February of this year.

The retailer response has been “shockingly muted,” research analyst Alina Comoreanu wrote on the CardHub website.  

Starting on Oct. 1, 2015, grocers became financially responsible for fraudulent transactions when a counterfeit credit card is used at their stores’ checkout lanes. Prior to that date, the bank issuing the plastic took the loss.

The shift in liability was part of the change for merchants upgrading their POS terminals to accept EMV cards that have an embedded microchip – a small metal square on the front of the card that adds a higher level of security to the transaction when used in chip-enabled terminals. The new technology is designed to protect consumer data better than a card with a magnetic stripe.