US Gets Chance To Catch Up On Credit Card Security
Peter Svensson of the AP on the slow move toward EMV credit card technology (probably more commonly known as chip and PIN) in the U.S.:
The U.S.’s status as a holdout has also started to cause problems for travelers. While most European stores and restaurants still accept magnetic-stripe cards, Americans are finding that their credit cards don’t work in European automated kiosks, like the ones that sell tickets for the Paris Metro. Some U.S. banks, like Wells Fargo, have started issuing smart cards to customers who travel abroad.
Next year, Visa will start dangling this carrot in front of store owners: If they replace most of their terminals with ones that accept smart cards, they will no longer need to have their payment-system security checked every year. U.S. stores spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year for these audits, according to the NRF.
In an even more momentous shift, in 2015 Visa is shifting the liability for a certain kind of fraud from the banks to stores.
EMV is definitely not perfect either, and there have been a few successful attacks demonstrated in the U.K., but it is certainly more secure than what we have now.