EMV chip cards

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EMV Card Reissuance Update

With only one week to go before the EMV liability shift takes effect on October 1, Visa has recently reported that only 18% of their 720M US cards have been reissued with the chip technology.  That means 590M more cards will be reissued for Visa alone within the coming months.  PLC’s clients have seen an increase in the volume of new expiration dates received by our merchants through account updater, to the tune of nearly double what they had been receiving the year prior.  Considering only 18% of Visa’s portfolio has been reissued, the risk to recurring merchants of losing large amounts of their customer base due to involuntary churn is massive.  On top of the incredible volume at risk, the old rules for updating expiration dates aren’t as effective these days.  Issuers have been changing the month as well as the year on some of the new chip cards.  The result – advancing the year on the expiration date before attempting an authorization is not as likely to be successful.

The key to retaining these customers is a multi-pronged approach, encapsulating all of the tools available to recurring merchants to help them crush the unnecessary churn.

By | 2015-09-24T20:22:09+00:00 September 24th, 2015|Categories: Blog Post|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Is EMV the Solution to Recurrent Data Breaches

 

There has been a recurring theme over the past 12 months as major retailers across the U.S. are continually hit with malware attacks to their POS systems, compromising tens of millions of credit and debit cards, costing consumers and the industry hundreds of millions of dollars.

Recurring merchants are especially hit hard. Adding to the normal 30% annual churn rate of credit cards, recurring merchants can expect significantly more accounts to be closed. Tools available to help combat churn include account updater from Visa and MasterCard, and updater program from Discover, and a comprehensive decline recycling strategy combined with well-timed submissions to account updater programs can save scores of subscription customers. However, it will add to the overall cost of processing and there will remain some fallout with those issuers who don’t participate in the updater programs. Businesses who are not employing those tactics stand to lose about half or more of their customer base.

Beyond the immediate impact of card reissuance, card-not-present merchants are at risk of experiencing increased fraud down the road. Why? The proposed solution that is moving forward – and being pushed into play by many retailers more quickly than the October 2015 Visa and MasterCard mandate – has proven to drive up fraud for online merchants. EMV cards (aka chip cards or smart cards) have been in existence in Europe for many years. Since their rollout in the EU in 2002, fraud in card-not-present channels increased by more than 100%. While offline fraud was reduced to almost nothing, the fraud itself did not decrease; it merely shifted to less secure channels. This same pattern has been seen everywhere EMV technology […]

By | 2014-10-21T15:05:42+00:00 October 21st, 2014|Categories: Blog Post|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Impact of Data Breach for Target

An estimated 1.1M customers have had their personal and financial information compromised, thanks to the security breach via the malware now known as BlackPOS at Target, Neiman Marcus, Michael’s, and potentially other retailers.  That number could climb as additional retailers come forward.

The impact could be long-reaching for consumers, merchants, and financial institutions.  Target may be on the hook for fines anywhere from $400M-1B, not to mention potential lost revenue as consumer confidence wanes and usage of the Target labeled cards decreases.  The consumer confidence issue is something that could impact other retailers, too.  As fears of privacy mount, consumers are less likely to make purchases in stores, online, and via mobile devices.  Financial institutions are already bearing a brunt of the cost as they are reissuing cards, to the tune of $10 per card reissued.  So far, about 15.1M cards have been reissued for a cost of $150M.  They also stand to lose some revenue as consumers revert to cash for more purchases and save their credit cards for higher ticket items only.

Every player has skin in the game here, but one solution that is being touted by the card associations as providing much more security for brick and mortar stores could actually open up online and CNP merchants to additional fraud.  EMV (Europay,MasterCard, and Visa) chip technology (also called chip and PIN) has been in use in Europe and other industrialized nations for more than 20 years.  While it has proven effective at reducing fraud at the point of sale, CNP fraud has increased with the adoption of EMV.  Fraudsters are more able to get fraudulent transactions through in a card not present space with chip cards than they are in person, thereby driving […]

By | 2014-02-03T18:44:59+00:00 February 3rd, 2014|Categories: Blog Post|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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