EMV payment card technology brings additional security features to both consumers and retailers. Even though both Visa and Mastercard want to prioritize the acceptance of this technology as soon as possible, it looks like their initial plans have hit a roadblock. In fact, the chip deadline for gas station owners has been pushed back to 2020.
Visa Revises Its EMV Plans In A Significant Way
The news about Visa delaying their EMV adoption plans for gas station owners came as quite a surprise to a lot of people. Installation of payment terminals capable of processing these payments is taking longer than originally anticipated. At first, this change was scheduled to be finalized by 2017, but Visa pushed the deadline forward to 2020.
Financial experts express a lot of concern over this decision, as they feel fraudsters will have an easier time defrauding these gas stations for the next few years. To be more precise, it is expected that the number of payment card skimmers located at fuel stations will only increase. Right now these locations seem to be the primary cause of payment card theft through skimmers across the United States.
Visa drafted EMV adoption rules to reduce fraud numbers across the US, and the rest of the world. Up until this point payment card fraud remains one of the biggest threats to consumers around the world. It is difficult to protect oneself against this type of illicit behavior, and requiring a PIN code to complete payments is an excellent way to reduce fraud numbers.
Installing these new payment terminals, however, comes at a rather steep cost, which most gas station owners are not necessarily willing to pay right now. Then again, it is in their best interest to deal with increasing fraud numbers and skimming attempts. Now that Visa is effectively giving them a reason to delay increasing payment security, things are not looking good for the consumer.
US fuel stations are notorious for being behind the curve when it comes to embracing costly updates, even at the risk of less secure payments. Chip card readers are expensive and can cost up to US$10,000 per gas station. That is quite a lot of money, and most locations simply cannot afford such a change during these times of economic crisis.
It remains to be seen what Visa plans to do against these organized crime outfits who are targeting fuel stations with card skimmers. Several Southern US states are seeing an increase of stolen card details of late, and it is apparent that something will need to change sooner rather than later. Even though some skimmers can steal PIN data as well, card swiping needs to phased out before things get out of hand even more.
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