EMV In The U.S. – Are You Ready?

By Beth Longware Duff, Editor-in-Chief, TransFirst.com

The transition to chip-based credit card processing is well underway in the United States. With magnetic stripe credit cards about to take their place in history alongside carbon paper receipts and the flat bed imprinters used to create them, it’s time to focus seriously on cutting-edge EMV technology and how it will impact transaction processing in this country in the immediate future and beyond.

EMV Chip Technology

Introduced in France more than 20 years ago, EMV is now the international gold standard for credit and debit card processing based on microchip technology. This collaboration by Europay, MasterCard and Visa (hence the acronym) began as a way to ensure payment security and global interoperability. Today, the managing body EMVCo is owned collectively by MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, UnionPay and JCB.

EMV-enabled cards (also referred to as chip cards or smartcards) feature a gold square (contact) on their face, behind which a microchip is embedded. Account and cardholder information essential to the payment process is securely stored in a chip whose storage capacity is considerably greater than a magnetic stripe, making it more versatile for applications like mobile payments.

Perhaps most importantly from a data security standpoint, the EMV chip performs cryptographic (encoded) processing known as dynamic authentication. Unlike mag stripe credit card processing, which relies on point-of-sale (POS) authentication values that remain the same from transaction to transaction, dynamic authentication uses a unique, single-use value for each individual EMV transaction. This provides enhanced security against credit card fraud.

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