Beginning Oct. 31, 2012, issuers, merchants and acquirers in Canada that support American Express Co. cards will become liable for fraudulent transactions initiated with magnetic stripe cards when the fraud would have been averted by cards meeting the EMV Integrated Circuit Card Specifications, Amex Canada said.
Canada is switching to EMV, and Amex is the last major card network to set a fraud liability deadline.
Visa Inc. has set a deadline of Oct. 1 this year, and MasterCard Inc.'s deadline is two weeks later, Oct. 15.
The Visa and MasterCard deadlines have prompted Canadian merchants to scramble in recent months to ensure that their payment terminals will support EMV cards; analysts say they expect most point of sale systems to comply by yearend.
Merchants also are likely to be pleased to have some EMV guidance from Amex, said Catherine Johnston, the president and chief executive of the Advanced Card Technology Association of Canada, a nonprofit payments industry association in Ontario.
"This should bring a sigh of relief to merchants who were wondering what they might have to do about Amex, and now they have some clarity," she said.
By yearend more than half of Canada's 800,000 merchant-acceptance points will be EMV-compliant, and about 70% of the country's estimated 105 million credit and debit cards will be equipped with chips, the association has estimated.
