Global EMV by the numbers
by: Brandon Kuehl
For a time, it seemed the U.S. migration to EMV could be stalled by a classic chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. Merchants were reluctant to invest in the required payment system upgrades before card issuers embraced the new technology, while card issuers were hesitant to issue chip cards until more merchants got on board with the standard.
Elsewhere around the globe, a growing number of credit and debit cards were being embedded with EMV chips, and compatible card-reading point-of-sale (POS) devices were being installed. Now that the U.S. is well on its way to joining the rest of the world’s major markets, let’s take a look at some global EMV numbers.
In 2013, more than 80 percent of payment cards in western Europe, and nearly 100 percent of the card-reading machines at merchants, financial institutions (FIs) and other POS terminals, were equipped with EMV technology. That same year, in Eastern Europe and Russia, 44 percent of payment cards were EMV compliant and 91 percent of POS terminals were equipped to read them.
In North America (not including the U.S.) and South America, 54 percent of cards and nearly 85 percent of card terminals were EMV-capable in 2013. That same year, nearly 39 percent of cards in African and Middle Eastern countries were EMV-chip embedded, with 86 percent of POS terminals EMV compliant. Lastly, in the Asia Pacific region, 17 percent of payment cards had EMV chips, and 72 percent of POS stations could read them that year.
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