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News: A Monkey Wrench in EMV Chips Say Retailers - Credit-Land.com

Have you felt like it's taking longer than expected for the EMV chip cards to be accepted at all the stores you go to? If so you might be right, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), indicating that a year after the deadline for retailers to have the new terminals up and running in their stores, the card companies have actually delayed the rollout by making them wait for certification.

What's the hold up? The NRF says card companies aren't signing off on the upgrades as fast as they need to. "Most major retailers have done their part, but the card industry continues to drop the ball," NRF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mallory Duncan said.

"Retailers have spent billions of dollars to install the new equipment but card companies have failed to sign off on the installations in a timely manner. Many retailers have had new chip card readers sitting next to their cash registers for a year waiting for the card companies' blessing," he added.

An NRF study

The NRF recently surveyed their members finding that 86% have it on their agenda to have the new Europay MasterCard Visa chip card technology up and running by the end of the year.

But what about those who don't have any EMV terminals or tech in operation yet? Of these 57% do have the equipment installed, but they are waiting to get their certification by the card industry, a certification that will let them turn their EMV terminals on. And 60% have been in a holding pattern for half a year or more.

Hard to hack

The new EMV cards make it harder for cyber criminals to counterfeit credit and debit cards when using stolen card data. In the study retailers also indicated that they had technologies like tokenization and encryption in the works to make it more difficult to hack card data.

The National Retail Federation represents home goods, specialty stores, discount and department stores, as well as Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and Internet retailers. Their members are located in the United States and more than 45 countries.