CLEVELAND — Firefighters Community CU will convert its credit card base to EMV early this year, distributing 5,400 chip cards to members.
The cards are being issued well in advance of the October 2015 Visa and MasterCard liability shift deadline, and the plastic will also carry a mag stripe. Ben Laurendeau, president and CEO of the $200 million CU, thinks merchants will begin to move to enable EMV at POS.
"Today, 100% of that liability is on the card issuer for in-person transactions," said Laurendeau in a published report. "This shift in liability, I predict, is going to compel most merchants to move to EMV-enabled terminals because they don't want to hold that liability."
Laurendeau said FCCU believes reduction in card-present fraud losses — as EMV does not protect against card-not-present crime — will come close to offsetting the CU's additional expenses for the chip cards.
While the price for issuing EMV can vary a great deal based on the size of the FI's card base, Firefighters paid about $4 additional per card, totaling $21,600 in added expense, said the CEO.
Firefighters Community decided to reissue its cards with EMV chips to modernize its credit card program, Laurendeau said. Given the liability shift on the horizon, implementing EMV technology now makes sense, he said.
The New-York based United Nations FCU was the first FI in the country to migrate to EMV.
