drag2share: The Massive Credit And Debit Security Overhaul In The US Is Coming â Here Are The Costs And Opportunities
The massive Target data breach compromised the credit and debit card information of 40 million consumers and spotlighted the enormous payment card fraud problem in the U.S.
It's also drawn attention to the looming payment card security overhaul that's coming to the U.S. over the next five years, called EMV, or the "chip card" standard. For consumers, EMV will be most recognizable as a chip on credit and debit cards that works as an embedded microprocessor.
Created by Europay, Visa, and MasterCard, the payments security standard has already been implemented in most of the developed world and contributed to overall reductions in fraud.
For the U.S. to adopt the standard, banks, processors, and merchants will have to upgrade their systems to accept and process chip card transactions. It's not a small task and could end up being an enormous financial burden.