The transition to EMV technology reached a major milestone as the payments industry prepared for the long-anticipated liability shift deadline. While the move to chip-enabled cards and terminals is designed to improve payment security and reduce card-present fraud, implementation challenges have slowed adoption among both merchants and issuers. As businesses race to deploy EMV card readers and educate consumers about new checkout experiences, payment providers are introducing solutions that support multiple payment methods, including NFC payments and mobile wallets. Although the liability shift marks an important step toward a more secure payments ecosystem, its full impact may not be realized until peak shopping periods test the readiness of merchants, consumers, and payment networks alike.
The big day is almost here. The long-awaited liability shift for EMV cards happens this week and everyone is finalizing their plans.
“PayPal announced Monday that the PayPal Here Chip Card Readers will be available September 30, one day ahead of the deadline, for $149 at purchase. Merchants who process $3000 using the reader within the first three months will get a $100 rebate. The company says the reader, which has been available in the U.K. and Australia for two years, also accepts magnetic stripe cards and NFC payments like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.
“We look forward to working with small businesses to help mitigate the impact of the liability shift on their business, and we will continue to innovate to help them stay ahead of the payments curve,” PayPal said.”
As we have repeatedly written about in our research here at Mercator, the October 1st “deadline” is going to be a bit anticlimactic given the struggles that issuers and merchants have had in actually rolling out chip cards and readers for their customers. The unevenness of that rollout (and the resulting consumer confusion) will lead to a much more dramatic moment for the payments industry: black Friday.
Overview by Alex Johnson, Sr. Analyst,Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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