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