Much has been written here and elsewhere about EMV Chip credit cards. Countries across the world have adopted EMV, much to the chagrin of some internationally traveling Americans. Our slow adoption of EMV has led to some hassles for credit card acceptance when traveling overseas. Thankfully, in the last few years, more and more US cards have been issued with EMV chips, though most are Chip & Signature rather than the more widespread (in other countries) Chip & PIN cards.
Yesterday, I received an email from Square, the provider of credit card swipe readers to many small businesses with the headline, “EMV: Coming Soon to Your Business.” According to Square’s blog, they will soon be rolling out a reader equipped to work with Chip cards. Why is this change happening? According to the blog post,
“almost half of the world’s credit card fraud now happens in the United States – even though only a quarter of all credit card transactions happen here.”
I don’t suppose I should be surprised at that statistic, but I was. No wonder the push is on. Of course, come October 2015, there will be a liability shift from banks to merchants if they are not capable of accepting chip cards. Oddly enough, I’d been wondering when Square would offer an EMV option just this week. Now we know they’re working on it. I’ve noticed recently that a few restaurants I frequent now have an EMV equipped reader, although I’ve yet to see them used.
I’ve written about my own EMV experiences in the past here and here. Personally, I think it’s past time for the USA to move to EMV. News that a big provider of card processing to small business has an EMV reader in the works is further proof that EMV cards are coming soon for all of us.
-MJ, August 1, 2014
At places I’ve used the card (only in US) you have to insert the card and then leave it there through the end of the transaction. Is that always the case? I just hope I don’t absent mindedly walk away without it.
@Carl,
The card usually needs to remain in until the transaction ends. I’ve found chip card transactions take some number of seconds longer than swipe transactions.
M&T bank have true chip and pin cards with no annual fee. Of course it may go to chip and signature, but the rep on the phone stated it is to go to pin first. I think it would depend on the merchant. YMMV.
Thanks for the information, laptop nomad!
Seems like all the big merchants are installing the chip reader machines. Walmart seems to be the main ones using them however. I’ve seen them at Target, Lowe’s Home Depot, etc. but most aren’t using them. Walmart’s are very slow so I assume it’s a system issue with them. Once they can sort that out it should be better. I would look at Target and see how they progress with these. They always seem to have the fastest card reader approval system of anywhere I’ve ever been. I really would like to be able to use the PIN feature instead… Read more »