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.