For several years an important number of banks in Latin America, Europe and Asia have been employing the EMV technology in their credit and debit cards. And those which have not yet done it, are already in the process of migrating to that technology.
Currently there are 2.3 billions of EMV chip cards all over the world and for the end of 2013 there were approximately 36.9 millions of POS EMV compatible, worldwide.
The EMV chip is replacing the magnetic stripe technology. That is because the EMV chip increases the security levels of card transactions, thanks to the cryptographic processing and unique authentication. With a magnetic stripe card, the information contained in the stripe can be easily stolen, but that´s not the case of the EMV chip. In this case, a unique code is generated and the information can´t be used again, so if a hacker intends to stole the information, he will fail because the transaction will be denied. This way, card data thefts and fraudulent transactions are prevented.
In fact, the countries that are currently using EMV chip have seen a significant fraud decline up to a 67% in face-to-face transactions.
The situation in USA is very particular because the majority of its commercial sector has been reluctant to adopt the new technology. One of the reasons that support this position is the implementation cost of the new technology. However, for the end of 2013 47% of all the card fraud in the world, took place in USA, which means that almost half of the worldwide fraud occurs in just one country! Obviously something must be done, sooner rather than later.
In fact, this situation will significantly change next October, the deadline established by the major credit card issuers, MasterCard and Visa, for the American merchants to adopt the EMV technology, because on the contrary, the responsibility for any card fraud will be charged to the least compliant party with this technology. That means that if the merchant hasn´t implemented the equipment with EMV technology, and still permit a transaction without EMV cards, then he/she will be the responsible for the card fraud.
Be prepared for EMV migration! Inteligensa is the most experienced company in Latin America in EMV migration, having migrated more than 200 millions of cards to this new technology. Our plants and Personalization Centers have been certified by Visa, MasterCard AMEX and JCB certified. We have all of this experience and knowledge are at the disposal of the American financial institutions for them to be successful in their EMV migration processes. Our experience, leading edge technology and years of knowledge are the guarantee of success in your EMV migration.