SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—The volume of chip card transactions in the U.S. increased from $12.1 billion in November to $15.8 billion in December, a 30% increase in one month, according to Visa.
The payment processor also reports that seven out of 10 Americans now have at least one chip card in their wallet, and that 93% of consumers are aware that the transition to EMV is happening.
But the move to EMV is not foolproof in stopping crooks, who will also migrate to other payment methods, including mobile, reminded Scott Schober, president and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems, Inc., which specializes in wireless threat detection. In a report in ThirdCertainty, Schober said bad actors can use other tricks.
“The EMV technology is still hackable,” said Schober. “However, hackers are going to go after the simple hack.”
Identity theft experts anticipate that fraudsters will simply shift their attention to merchants that use mobile payments—or don’t use a physical POS terminal at all.
“For bad actors, when one avenue dries up, they will look for other ways,” said Numaan Huq in ThirdCertainty, a Canada-based senior threat researcher with Trend Micro’s forward-looking threat research team.
As many experts have predicted, criminals are moving to online, card-not-present fraud (CNP)—and some say it could be a bigger move than what was experienced in Canada when that country migrated to EMV.
The reason, crooks have more sophisticated tools today.
“In the past, most of the tools hackers used were extremely crude,” Schober stated in ThirdCertainty. “But advances in technology are making it much easier to compromise people online.”
Canada, for example, saw a 54% decline in counterfeit cards and 133% jump in CNP fraud between 2008 and 2013, according to Aite Group research.
Aite estimates that CNP fraud in the United States will grow from $2.9 billion to $6.4 billion, as hackers shift their tactics.