You and EMV

Liabilities

Based on current set rules and regulations, developers should not be held liable if their product does not support EMV. Counterfeit fraud liability shifts to the merchant if it is unable to process the presented EMV card.

Traditional magnetic stripe card used at merchant’s (mag stripe) non-EMV enabled terminal = issuer liable
EMV chip card used at merchant’s (mag stripe) non-EMV enabled terminal = merchant liable
EMV chip card used at merchant’s EMV-enabled terminal = issuer liable

Opportunities

For VARs, the recent liability shift provides a great opportunity to increase market share within their vertical, offering EMV technology to savvy customers who’ve historically been unafraid of shifting their business from one VAR to another. In certain verticals, EMV can become a huge differentiator for VARs to leverage and win new business while keeping existing customers.

It is necessary that VARs educate themselves on the variety of new services that are entering the market, including mobile marketing and analytics. It gives providers an excellent opportunity to break out of commodity selling by offering new solutions that can make a profound impact on merchants. It is your job to educate your clients and prospects before your competition does.

There is a lack of urgency among merchants who may not think there’s a pressing need to update their hardware. They may also feel that their infrastructure is ‘secure’ enough therefore they don’t need to be concerned about breaches of card data. Take this lack of understanding as your opportunity to act as their trusted advisor and help educate them on becoming compliant and protected from the liability of any breaches in data.

More than half of small business owners have little to no knowledge of EMV. – Javelin Market Research

What happens if I don’t get EMV certified?

What does EMV implementation mean for application developers and service providers? Although merchants are not mandated to support these new cards, the cost of card fraud is now assigned to the merchant if their technology is less secure than the issuer’s. This shift has begun to create merchant demand for EMV-ready point-of-sale (POS) solutions. Many providers in the U.S. are still unfamiliar with EMV, and even those with previous EMV experience in other regions now need to make accommodations for the unique U.S. payments environment.