The deadline for your business to migrate to EMV acceptance is approaching. EMV is a series of regulations regarding secure methods of payment. While developed in the 90’s, the US is actually one of the last countries to adopt these regulations. We wanted to address a few key points and prepare you for this change as the date in October gets closer and closer.
If you run a retail location, these new regulations can mean drastic changes for you. You may be prepared, but you may need to make a couple of key changes to your method of taking payments. We want to prepare you for these changes in a series of detailed posts we will be putting up in the next few months.
The bottom line – these changes will make transactions extremely secure for your customers. Fraud has doubled in less than a decade, and this is the ultimate reason the government is cracking down. With that being said, we wanted to address the exact reasoning and explanation to this increase in security. So let’s start with the basics; what differences are there between the standard magnetic strip credit cards and the new EMV chip cards?
According to www.CreditCards.com, “the magnetic stripes on traditional credit and debit cards contain unchanging data.” This means that the information is never changed, making it extremely easy for your card to be duplicated. We’ve seen it time and time again, and chances are, you or someone you know has fallen victim to this scam.
The EMV card is a drastic improvement in customer security. The EMV chip creates a unique transaction ID whenever the card is used. It’s a form of tokenization in a retail sense that ensures your card data is never compromised. Card duplication would never work because the transaction ID that was used could never be used again.
The important thing to note is that while this is a huge improvement for customer security, it also ensures your business is taken care of in regards to fraud. The cost of fraud is huge. Target learned this the hard way. Their settlement ended up costing the company millions of dollars. By taking a small investment, you’ll create security for your customers and avoid the headaches of potential fraud associated with your business.
Have any questions regarding the upcoming changes? Go ahead and comment below and we will address your questions in next month’s post.