The EMV Liability Shift went into effect two years ago in October 2015. Since then, U.S. merchants have made a lot of progress in adopting the chip-based card transactions, and consumers have grown accustomed to inserting their credit or debit cards to complete a payment. However, you might be among the many merchants who have taken steps to accept EMV transactions but are still struggling to support them. Why? Most likely, your merchant processing solution is to blame.
But, My Payment Device Supports EMV
You might have purchased an expensive chip-enabled payment device to prepare for EMV. Having a device that supports chip card transactions is not enough to actually process these transactions. Your merchant processing solution needs to be able to support EMV as well. To do this, your vendor needs to become EMV-certified with every processor they work with, every card brand and every device they offer, which is costly and time-consuming.
Didn’t My Vendor Have Plenty of Time to Prepare for EMV?
Yes. The major card brands – Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express – all announced in 2012 their plans to migrate to EMV in the U.S. However, EMV has been widespread in the rest of the world for over a decade, with liability shifts going into effect in Europe in 2005 and 2006. Even if your merchant processor began preparations in time for EMV migration in the U.S., they may have hit roadblocks that significantly set them back in the process. Often, this is a result of handoffs between your merchant processor, gateway and acquirer.
Am I At Risk? A Lot of Merchants and Consumers Are Still Transitioning
If you are not able to support EMV transactions, then you are liable for fraudulent, card-present transactions. Since the migration to EMV in the U.S., merchants with EMV-enabled terminals have seen a drop in counterfeit fraud by 58%, and financial losses from fraud have dropped by 28%.
Without EMV, you’re in the minority of merchants who do not process chip card transactions. 98% of credit card and 86% of debit card transactions by dollar volume in the U.S. are EMV. Consumers are also far more comfortable with chip card transactions today than they were in 2015. 63% of all payment cards in the U.S. are chip-enabled.
So What Can I Do?
Take control of your POS security by working with a full stack payment vendor who can support EMV. Full stack means a single platform that has ownership and accountability of the end-to-end healthcare payments infrastructure, from the point where you capture payment information through the funding, settlement and reconciliation. A full stack vendor eliminates the handoffs between acquirers, gateways and processors because it manages all of these functions on a single platform. This means fewer roadblocks and diversions to deliver payment innovations, like EMV, Apple Pay® and beyond.
Don’t forget to protect your POS payments with multi-layer security. EMV is effective in protecting against card-present fraud, but it won’t protect you from a breach. Make sure your merchant processor and your payment devices can also support PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) to arm your POS with the strongest payment security.
Learn more about EMV, P2PE and other topics in security and compliance for healthcare payments by watching our webinar, PCI, EMV, HIPAA and More: Making Sense of Security and Compliance for Healthcare Payments.