WASHINGTON—It’s been roughly six months since the Oct. 1 deadline for U.S. merchants to upgrade their payment terminals as part of the country’s shift to smart-chip credit cards, and 42% of retailers have not updated the terminals in any of their stores.
The news from CardHub follows industry reports that indicate less than 40% of merchants are currently accepting chip cards.
CardHub Monday released its 2016 EMV Adoption Survey, which polled 55 major retailers and 1,000 individuals across the U.S. to gauge the sentiment of both retailers and consumers on the transition.
Other highlights from the report:
- 43% of retailers that have experienced data breaches in the past five years have not updated their point of sale terminals
- 56% of people don’t care if a retailer’s payment terminal is chip-enabled
- 41% of people say they don’t have (or don’t know if they have) a smart-chip credit card
- 62% of people don’t understand the difference between major card security standards
- 41% of people falsely believe debit cards protect them from fraud better than credit cards
- About 40% of people say they never complete purchases by inserting their card into a chip-enabled payment terminal
- 40% of people have received a chip card in the past six months
“Most people’s first introduction to, and perhaps only interaction with, EMV payment technology has come at the mailbox, not the checkout counter, arriving in the form of an unexpected replacement credit card with a curious, shiny computer chip embedded within it,” stated CardHub. “You see, financial institutions have been fairly responsive to the Oct. 1, 2015, deadline set by Visa and MasterCard for the transition away from magnetic-stripe card security – the backbone of U.S. domestic payment processing since the ’70s.”
The retailer response, continued CardHub, has been “shockingly muted by comparison, which is problematic considering merchants that do not implement EMV-compliant payment terminals are now liable for fraudulent purchases made in their stores. And the roughly $8 billion in fraudulent card purchases made in the U.S. each year certainly represents a mountain of risk for resistant retailers.”