EMV Technology In Credit and Debit Cards Reducing Counterfeit Fraud, Says Visa (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader cites an article on USA Today: The new chip-enabled cards flowing into the U.S. marketplace have already made a dent in fraud, with some of the biggest merchants seeing a dip of more than 18% in counterfeit transactions, according to Visa. Among the 25 merchants who were suffering the most instances of counterfeit fraud at the end of 2014, five that began processing credit and debit cards equipped with the new EMV technology saw those infractions fall 18.3% as of the final quarter of 2015, says Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of risk products at Visa. Meanwhile, five of those merchants who were not yet equipped to handle chip-enabled cards saw an increase in fraudulent transactions of 11.4%. "We're seeing EMV is having a positive impact on counterfeit fraud," Ericksen says. "Merchants who implement chip, their counterfeit fraud is going down, while those still finalizing plans, their counterfeit fraud is going up."Also from the report, "Visa on Tuesday also announced a software upgrade that will shave the amount of time spent on chip card transactions. With 'Quick Chip,' consumers can dip their chip cards into the terminal and withdraw it in two seconds or less, instead of waiting until their purchase is authorized. The consumer can 'put the card in the terminal and put it right back in your wallet and . . . move to get their coffee, or hamburger or start bagging their groceries,' Ericksen says. Ars Technica has more details.

Comments

Heh, if only it worked

[infinite9]

I'm a US citizen living outside the US. Let me tell you that these chip cards are a nightmare for us. They work about 50% of the time, with no rhyme or reason as to when they'll work or why. Trying the card a second time sometimes works. Sometimes the machines ask for PIN codes when there isn't one, other times not. When this happens, I can enter any random number and the transaction goes through. A card will work at a particular gas station one day, then not the next, then works again the following day. The cards will usually work in one store, or almost never work in another store.

Locals with the new machines have no idea what they're doing. Sometimes they swipe cards with no magnetic stripe. Sometimes they pull the card out before the transaction is done. Sometimes they argue with me telling me it's a debit card when it's a credit card.

And in all cases, whenever the card doesn't work at a purchase, the error message is "declined".

My chip Visa ATM cards work in almost no machines here, while the magnetic stripe cards did. Some give the wrong menu options on ATM machines, allowing "savings account" as the only option when I have only a checking account. Others work or don't at random. The error message is useless. Or sometimes I get different error messages depending on whether I select english or spanish at the ATM. In general, I have about a 1 in 5 chance of extracting some amount of money from a machine. When I call the customer support number on the back of the card, they swear up and down the card works just fine.

I'm slowly removing myself from a reliance on banks and even money in general. These idiotic chip cards are only encouraging me to hasten my exit.

I'm convinced this is about 10% pilot error at the point of sale, and 90% a technical problem on the bank servers in the US. The development was probably outsourced to the lowest bidding indian consulting firm.