The FINANCIAL — Mastercard on August 3 announced that 80 percent of its U.S. consumer credit cards have chips, representing an 88 percent increase in chip card adoption since the October 1, 2015 liability shift started to bring EMV-secured payments to the U.S.
The company also sees 1.7 million chip-active merchant locations on its network, representing nearly 30 percent of the U.S. merchant population and a 374 percent increase in chip terminal adoption since October 1, 2015, according to Mastercard.
In terms of U.S. dollars, counterfeit card fraud is down over 60 percent at Mastercard’s top 5 EMV-enabled merchants.
“Mastercard has helped over 150 countries adopt EMV and, time and again, we’ve seen the same result: significant reductions in counterfeit card fraud,” said Chiro Aikat, senior vice president of product delivery – EMV for Mastercard. “The U.S. is one of the most complex markets in the world and great progress has been made in securing our payments ecosystem in a short amount of time. It’s rewarding for the industry to start seeing signs that merchants, issuers and consumers can be freed from the burdens of card fraud.”
M/Chip Fast Active at Local Markets
In April, Mastercard introduced M/Chip Fast, a new application based on contactless or ‘tap-and-go’ technology, designed to speed EMV transactions by prioritizing the steps critical to security. Cardholders can expect to experience speeds closer to the familiar magnetic stripe transactions with the added security of EMV.
With Index, a leading retail software company that combines secure payments, measurement and personalization for the offline world, New Seasons Market, a grocer with 19 West Coast locations, is one of the first merchants to bring the benefits of “faster EMV” to their customers.
“We’re known for having the friendliest cashiers in town and now we have faster checkout too,” said Sean Teisher, New Seasons Market. “With this new technology from our partner Index, our customers can just dip their chip card and remove it—it’s simple, fast and friendly.”
New Leaf Community Markets, located in Santa Cruz, CA, has also implemented M/Chip Fast to reduce EMV transaction times to three seconds or less.
Faster Chip Terminal Testing and Certification
In June, Mastercard unveiled a new EMV chip terminal testing and certification program that speeds chip terminal deployment to hours, rather than days, allowing merchants to move more quickly to EMV. The new program maintains terminal testing and certification quality and empowers merchant bank acquirers and value-added resellers to take more responsibility in the process including:
Acquirers will have more responsibility and flexibility for terminal testing as a part of their own internal processes and schedules. Mastercard has also cut the number of needed tests by 58 percent, minimizing mandatory tests and allowing acquirers to use their discretion and expertise in deciding when terminals are ready for deployment.
VARs will receive more and dedicated resources to help accelerate terminal deployments. The new resources will help VARs navigate terminal configurations, test processes and ramp up in-field issue resolution.
Acquirers and VARs will benefit from published guidelines on standard terminal test configurations which will improve the testing cycle and simplify testing processes. Standard terminal configuration packages will be available for certain industry segments, such as quick-serve restaurants and big box retailers.
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