Nine out of 10 Americans use chip cards at about a third of U.S. locations enabled to accept chip payments but the industry must address fraud in in online and mobile channels.
In its winter 2017 market snapshot, the Princeton Junction, N.J.-based U.S. Payments Forum, formerly the EMV Migration Forum, provided updates on EMV chip migration status, priorities for accelerating merchant chip enablement and securing the card-not-present channel, and recently-released payments industry resources.
When it comes to EMV chip migration the forum also revealed steady progress in the U.S. with an estimated 79% of ATMs completing migration by the end of 2017.
“The volume of chip-on-chip transactions has been growing at a steady rate, but we need to accelerate merchant enablement to reach critical mass and meet the goal of the chip migration: removing in-store counterfeit card fraud, the largest source of fraud in the U.S., from the system,” Randy Vanderhoof, director of the U.S. Payments Forum said. “To help the industry meet this goal, the Forum is prioritizing outreach and educational programs for the ATM, petroleum, transit and hospitality industries, as well as the mid-size merchant community.”
In addition to aiding the chip migration to reduce in-store counterfeit card fraud, the U.S. Payments Forum prioritized the importance of addressing fraud in the card-not-present environment in online and mobile channels. “It is absolutely critical that the payments industry continue to simultaneously devote the same level of energy to work to avoid fraud increasing in the card-not-present channel,” Vanderhoof added. “
The forum also addressed recent deadline modifications. At the end of last year, American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa altered timelines for their respective EMV fraud liability shift policies for automated fuel dispensers in the U.S., slated to take effect in October 2017, to October 2020.
“The unique challenges facing the retail petroleum industry in upgrading their outside pay-at-the-pump systems to EMV have been an active part of the EMV migration discussions over the last year within the U.S. Payments Forum and its Petroleum Working Committee,” Vanderhoof said. “After the policy modifications were announced late last year, there were some misconceptions they may cause the petroleum industry to delay their migration plans. But what we’re really seeing is that the petroleum industry understands that they need to ‘put the pedal to the metal’ and use this extra time to complete the hardware and software upgrades at the pump to make sure their outdoor environments are enabled to accept chip as quickly as possible to avoid fraud risk.”
Over the last quarter, the U.S. Payments Forum and its members provided a number of resources on EMV implementation guidance and optimization approaches for the industry. These included:
“Implementing EMV at the ATM” workshop series. The Forum hosted a number of workshops to provide implementation guidance to credit unions, independent ATM providers, small banks, and merchant deployers preparing to implement EMV chip card technology at the ATM in the U.S. The next workshop will be held on February 14, 2017 at 1 p.m. during the ATMIA U.S. Conference at the Sapphire Falls Resort, Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.
EMV testing and certification. The Forum updated the “EMV Testing and Certification White Paper: Current Global Payment Network Requirements for the U.S. Acquiring Community,” including updates from the global payment networks and addition of an appendix discussing Faster EMV (i.e., Quick Chip, M/Chip Fast) implications for testing and certification.
The Forum also launched the Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee to explore opportunities and challenges, identify possible approaches, and develop practical implementation guidance and best practices for the variety mobile and contactless payments solutions being implemented in the U.S.
