EMV Technology Is Finally Taking Hold

Remember the doom-and-gloom hype that filled the air as the October 1, 2015 EMV rollout deadline approached? A new payment processing era began when merchants were tasked with being prepared to accept the new EMV technology (credit cards with a chip) or they would be liable for counterfeit charges instead of card issuers.

At the time, the payment processing industry struggled to help business owners understand EMV, its benefits, and the impact of the liability shift. It has been slow to take hold, but finally there seems to be statistics that support the idea that almost three years after the initial deadline, EMV is finally catching on with merchants.

Visa’s latest numbers (from Sept. 2015 – Dec. 2017) reflect that clear advances have taken place in EMV technology adoption among merchants. According to paymentweek.com, in the first two years after the rollout of the chip card technology:

• EMV cards were accepted at nearly six times more locations – going from 392,000 to 2.7 million.
• Almost 60% of all stores in the U.S. are now accepting EMV cards.
• Visa chip cards grew from 159 million to 481 million.
• 67% of all Visa cards were chip cards, representing 209.1 million debit cards and 272.7 million credit cards.

Most importantly, in December 2017, 96% of all payment volume was processed on chip cards – representing about 1.5 billion total transactions at $78 billion.

EMV Has Proven Beneficial

Back in 2015, many merchants – especially smaller retailers – didn’t see a point in making the switch when EMV was slow to adopt. And businesses were discouraged to embrace the shift due to the frustrations that EMV presented. But today, payment cybercrime is down due to the little chip and the total dollar amount of card fraud dropped 70% in two years’ time. With the cost of implementing the proper systems to support EMV becoming more affordable, even smaller retailers have come on board and EMV appears to have been a success.

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