Are American consumers ready for EMV chip cards?

Pymnts a leading payment blog cited a recent internal survey conducted by MasterCard that showed 57% of MasterCard holders would be interested in receiving Chip cards within 6 months or less.

Although consumers might not understand the technology behind EMV Chip & PIN, there’s enough additional support that shows they understand that it is more secure, devalues data and makes counterfeiting difficult.

Why else would consumers want something more secure to protect their sensitive data? Data breaches, privacy issues, and other areas in the globe that have EMV are just a few examples that help support this demand.

Another note to point out is Vision Critical – a very well known market research firm has reported “69% of Americans believe that EMV chips will make their purchases more secure”. In fact only 5% believed that this technology would have a negative effect on security.

In an interview with Oliver Manahan, MasterCard’s Vice President of Electronic Payments, Oliver states that there’s been a nice migration to contactless at the same time as EMV. Adding contactless to EMV terminals will not only future proof merchants it will allow for a better customer experience as they will not have to worry about inserting their cards and entering their PIN.

EMV has worked very well for restaurants in Canada. Our team at Kubera has implemented countless mobile and wireless terminals that are carried to the table by the server. Here's why it's great: It's easy for customers to use, and there is an added benefit where the tip option can be calculated by percentage or dollar amount. In addtion, according to Manahan, this has reignited very well with servers as many of them are receiving larger tips and there’s no money left on the table that could get lost or stolen.Referring back to the Vision Critical survey “one in 10 respondents said they had already received their EMV chip card”.  If the survey is representative of the population of the united states that’s nearly 32 Million Americans! Finally by October of next year, all credit card companies are expected to move to EMV.