October 1 was a game-changing day as far as credit cards are concerned. That’s because this was the day that the EMV rollout went into effect in the United States. Although “rollout” was the term used to broadly describe what took place, October 1 did not actually signal a mandatory implementation of EMV across the board. Instead, it represented a fraud liability shift, wherein merchants – and not card providers – will be largely responsible for dealing with fraudulent transactions if these merchants are not EMV-enabled.

“With the EMV fraud liability shift underway, are businesses prepared?”

This shifting of responsibility is meant to spur retailers to quickly adopt EMV processing capabilities. As a technology, EMV is an important step forward in terms of securing payments at the point of sale. With chip technology, counterfeit fraud is a lot harder to carry out. As ComputerWorld pointed out, this fraud type is the most widely leveraged by criminals in this country.

Through a three-pronged process that encompasses card authentication, cardholder verification and transaction verification, EMV functions to provide an unprecedented level of payment protection, especially in comparison with what’s available from magnetics strip technology. As experts have noted, however, the passage of the EMV rollout date doesn’t mean we’re even close to across-the-board EMV compliance among retailers.

“We all know it will be at least two to three years before the U.S. is anywhere close to being fully EMV compliant,” wrote Tracy Kitten, BankInfoSecurity’s executive editor and an expert on fraud.

According to TechTarget, even following the arrival of the liability shift date, EMV adoption rates have been slow going. Not surprisingly, the retailers that have already made the shift tend to be bigger businesses like Wal-Mart and Walgreens. For smaller organizations, however, the shift can be seen as more daunting, and many small business leaders still want EMV rollout-related questions answered before they make the switch. In the interim, however, they risk being liable for card fraud that occurs at their store.

Businesses need to remain on top of the EMV rollout.Businesses need to remain on top of the EMV rollout.

How Entrust Datacard can help your business with the EMV rollout

For many companies out there, EMV represents something that’s totally new – and like all new things, it requires getting adapted. But the EMV rollout also demands quick action. After all, no business – large or small – wants to be in a position where it’s accountable for fraudulent activity that could have been totally preventable. Fortunately, the transition to EMV isn’t something that companies have to undertake without help.

Here at Entrust Datacard, we offer EMV smart card solutions which significantly simplify the process of rolling out EMV. Among our EMV lineup is a robust hardware offering that includes smart card printers like the CE870 and CD820 systems. These instant issuance systems mean that card issuance can happen quickly, efficiently and safely, while our EMV software lineup is geared toward covering the data preparation and key management that accompanies EMV. The push to EMV may be a significant change for retailers and individuals alike, but with solutions like the ones we offer, the process can be made easy.

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