When The Chips Are Down: Understanding The EMV Safety Net

As U.S. credit card issuers and merchants move closer to the adoption of the EMV (Europay,MasterCard, and VISA) standard—the globally-accepted approach to payment security based on smart card technology—it’s important to understand how the payment process will work when and if the new technology fails.

As U.S. credit card issuers and merchants move closer to the adoption of the EMV (Europay,MasterCard, and VISA) standard—the globally-accepted approach to payment security based on smart card technology—it’s important to understand how the payment process will work when and if the new technology fails.

EMV cards look just like the standard magnetic stripe cards we use today. The primary difference is in the interface. EMV card payments are initiated by a chip on the card, which is read by an EMV terminal as opposed to an MSR (magnetic stripe reader). While enclosure of the chip inside an EMV card is designed to prevent damage and tampering, there is the possibility that the chip can break, or that a card could be deployed with a defective chip.

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