by: Henry Meier
In the immortal words of Elaine from Seinfeld is it time for you to attempt conversion?
Right now card issuers are liable for the costs of POS fraud involving both credit and debit cards. In October 2015 Visa and MasterCard shift this liability to merchants that can’t process chip based EMVtransactions. This creates a huge incentive for merchants to invest in new terminals but the benefits aren’t quite as clear-cutfor your credit union. After all if the vast majority of merchants can accept EMV by next October than you will beas liable as you are right now for card fraud.
To find out more about conversion issues yesterday I attended an excellent conference on EMVtechnology hosted by Covera. (Full disclosure: Coverais an affiliate of the Association).The most importantlesson I learned is that, if you start planning today, credit unions have more flexibility than I thought they did in deciding when and how to make the migration to EMV. Deciding on how much of a push your credit union should make is ultimately an individual decision unique to each credit union’s circumstances. The more time you give yourself the better off you will be. Here are some of the key questions I would ask after attending the conference.
What is your timeframe for migrating to EMV? It’s going to take more than six months (optimistically) to roll out chip based cards. If you aren’t planning now than your plan is not to convert anytime soon.
