FOSTER CITY, Calif.—Some banks are issuing EMV cards based on who spends the most money on their plastic, a new report indicates.
Speaking at an EMV forum Oct. 1, Kimberly Lawrence, Visa's head of North American operations, said issuers offering EMV cards “have prioritized their portfolios based on who's spending the most. They're kind of optimizing their investments.”
A Citi spokeswoman denied a link between spending and how the bank has distributed the EMV card, while other banks declined to detail how they've prioritized distribution of the technology, reported Bloomberg BNA.
Aite Group Research Director Julie Conroy, however, told the news outlet that bank officials have told her they have distributed EMV-protected cards based on spending. Banks initially prioritized their international travelers for their first rounds of EMV issuance because of the difficulty in using old magnetic-stripe cards abroad.
“As banks began mass issuance of EMV, many of the banks I've spoken with prioritized their most active users of cards for reissuance, since these cardholders naturally represent the most exposure,” Conroy told Bloomberg. “This roughly translates to consumers with higher net worth, since they'll be spending more on an aggregate basis.”
A new survey from CreditCards.com reveals that credit card holders with annual incomes of more than $75,000 are more than twice as likely to have an EMV card than lower-income people.
Oct. 1 officially marked the EMV liability shift deadline. Starting Oct. 1, the major card associations have said that any party that has made the investment in EMV, or chip card, deployment is protected from financial liability for card-present counterfeit fraud losses on this date. The risk from card-not-present transactions will continue to be an issue.