15 Sep EMV and What You Need to Know If You Accept Credit Cards
So if you accept credit cards in the United States then this is a must read. The world of accepting credit cards in America is about to change, and hopefully for the better. However, before that can happen every merchant must upgrade their processing devices. Yes everyone, even the guy with the honey at the farmers market with his little dongle on his phone for swiping your card. EMV standards are about to be the new normal in the U.S. as they have been for years in Europe.
What is EMV you ask and what the heck does it have to do with you the merchant?
EMV is a higher level of security and technical standards for credit and debit cards. The technology requires changes the cards themselves as well as the readers that accept them. This means that you the merchant MAY NEED NEW CARD READERS A.S.A.P. Why on earth would you spend the money to buy a new card reader you ask? Yes, we know those suckers are expensive, but here’s why.
Starting OCTOBER 1ST if you swipe the cards magnetic strip rather than “dipping” the cards chip the liability for some kinds of fraud may shift to you not the bank! Just imagine if you needed to cover the fraud charges on a customer’s card rather than American Express doing it! That might make getting a new card reader look really affordable.
So here are some simple English answers to common EMV conversion questions:
- What do merchants need to do to be ready if they are using a stand alone terminal?
Stand alone terminals will and should be updated to EMV compatible units by the end of October when the liability shift takes place.
- What do merchants need to do to be ready if they have an existing point of sale system with credit processing built in?
This is a function of the software provider to update the required hardware to accept EMV.
- What do merchants need to do to be ready if they have a website?
E-commerce and MOTO will not change a bit. All cards are key entered in these environments so the info is driven by card number rather than mag stripe or chip.
- What do merchants need to do to be ready if they have a program that stores the card data for recurring billing?
Nothing changes.
- What do merchants need to do to be ready if theyare currently setting up cc processing for the first time?
First timers need to buy a stand alone anyway, so the new units are EMV capable, All new POS setups will have the hardware integrated to handle EMV- if not right now, they will be within weeks.
- What do merchants that currently process credit and debit cards through mobile payment apps like Square and dongles need to do?
Great information like the graphic above is available at http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/technology-and-security/infographic-complete-guide-to-emv-migration
Thank you to Eric Goddard at Sage Payment Solutions for such helpful answer to our questions!
Top Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/23307937@N04/”>frankieleon</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/”>Foter</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>CC BY</a>
No Comments