EMV cards are designed to prevent increasing fraudulent transactions related to physically swipes at a payment terminal with a counterfeit card. With introduction of micro chip enabled EMV cards certain types of credit card fraud have been reduced significantly.
Most of the banks and credit card issuers are phasing out magnetic stripe cards to more secured EMV cards. There are interesting things you should know about the EMV chip credit cards.
What Is an EMV Credit Card and Why Does It Have a Chip?
The EMV is a new global technology standard for smart payment cards such as credit and debit card. The EMV chip equipped credit card is more secure card. EMV is named after its developers Europay, MasterCard and Visa.
It is also known as ‘chip and PIN’ or ‘chip and signature’ card. It looks similar to old credit card, but has a small microprocessor embedded metal chip enclosed instead of magnetic stripe or mechanical imprint on it.
The chip holds and protects card holder data and makes it much safer. The information stored in the chip is more difficult to hack and frauds can be reduced.
How do you Use Your EMV Credit Card?
You need to insert it into the front of card reader slot given below the numeric keypad with the chip facing up in an EMV-enabled terminal. Then follow the prompt to make your transaction. Unlike swapping your old credit card, you will have to leave the card till the transaction is processed and completed.
What Makes EMV Cards Safer?
Sophisticated encryption is built into chip makes it difficult to produce counterfeit copies. When you dip a chip card, it communicates back and forth with the payment terminal in encrypted language. It also creates a unique code for every transaction which is not used again. So even if the code is hacked, an effort to make transaction using the code would fail.
Online transactions made with the chip card makes it still vulnerable. Hackers can phish your credit card information from stored credit card information for shopping or recurring payments.
No PIN Required
U. S. credit card companies have now adopted chip and signature technology. You don’t need to enter PIN anymore; you have to verify your identity with your signature. It eliminates chances of PIN number being stolen and misused. Chip-and-signature is viewed as a half-measure between chip and PIN and magnetic cards.
It’s Ok If You Haven’t Received a Card Yet
If you have applied for EMV card, but haven’t received it so far, you don’t need to worry. You can still use your old magnetic card till you get new one. Once you receive a new EMV card, dispose your old one safely. Contact your card provider customer service if you think you
Not All Merchants Have the Equipment Yet
Most merchants have installed terminals to accept EMV cards as it help them avoid fraud; still there are some merchants who might not have EMV compliant terminals.
Small merchants might not be aware of the new technology or not much worried about security as card transactions are low and as such might not be ready for it.
Call Your Credit Card Issuer If You Suspect Fraud
Even if you are using EMV card and suspect fraud, you can call credit card processors at number displayed on back of your credit card. All the credit card fraud protection networks do work in a similar way. The same fraud liability rules apply in case of fraud detection.
Be much secured using EMV cards fabricated with new global standard chip technology! Read more articles on activateenter.