With a major liability shift now in effect in the US, American merchants who have installed chip reader technology in their POS terminals are now protected against losses from credit card fraud, while those who have not upgraded their technology may be liable. Acknowledging the change, MasterCard has released new data indicating that a huge shift is also underway among consumers.
According to the company, 40 percent of its US customers are now using EMV chip cards. Meanwhile, the Payments Security Task Force is predicting that by the end of the year, 60 percent of all payment cards in the US will feature this technology, and that its saturation will reach 98 percent by the end of 2017.
The numbers for merchants aren’t quite as encouraging, with only 26 percent of regional and national retailers accepting EMV chip cards. But with MasterCard reporting that 75 percent of cardholders are in agreement about the security benefits of EMV chip cards, merchants are likely to be increasingly inclined to adopt the compatible POS technology.
That means that increasing numbers of American merchants should soon have in place the contactless card readers needed to accept chip card payments, which will be good news for mPayment platforms relying on such technology such as Android Pay and Apple Pay (and, potentially, bad news for Samsung Pay, a key advantage of which is its compatibility with traditional swipe-based card readers). It’s also good news for PayPal, as it should drive some merchants to buy its PayPal Here card reader.
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