BOSTON—Credit and debit cards are transitioning over to the EMV standard at U.S. FIs, but one person called EMV a solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist in the industry. The U.S. is the last major market in the world to transition to EMV, said David Schneider, president of PULSE Network, “but there’s a reason that we’re the last major market, and it’s because there is no business case for EMV. It costs a lot to issue those cards, the infrastructure on the POS side is very expensive, and it’s complicated now by Durbin because of routing choice.”
Schneider, who spoke on a panel as part of NAFCU’s Annual Convention here, noted that the so-called chip-and-PIN cards are coming to the American market “primarily because we have international travelers, and you’ve got a subset of your travelers that are going to go overseas—and increasingly to markets where mag stripes are not available.”
The payments network president observed that because of the hurdles associated with transitioning to EMV, many FIs may distribute EMV cards to members heading overseas.
“We’re not going to see a wholesale implementation in th U.S. because we’re already looking at the move toward mobile adoption,” he said.
