Chase Targets Travel Community With British Airways Chip Card

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is rolling out its third chip card, which also marks the first U.S.-issued airline card to use EMV technology, the company announced Nov. 21.

Chase’s British Airways credit card now comes with a microchip to make transactions overseas easier and more secure. Though many chip cards are coupled with PIN security, Chase chose to require only a signature for additional authentication (see story).

Chase moved the British Airways card to chip in response to customers who wanted an easier time using their cards in Europe and Asia, Naney Pandit, general manager of Chase Card Services.

“It tended to be an irritant when our cardholders couldn’t use their cards in terminals where a chip card was needed,” particularly at unmanned kiosks, she tells PaymentsSource. “It’s all about customer experience for more security and more convenience,” she says.

Chase chose to require only a signature because the card’s transactions do not require a PIN to meet the EMV standard, and it was an “implementation decision” to use signature instead of PIN, Pandit she says.

Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the U.S.-based Smart Card Alliance, tells PaymentsSource it remains to be seen whether it will be easier or better for consumers to use chip-and-signature methods instead of chip-and-PIN.

“The debate about chip and PIN versus chip and signature is really one about whether we put more emphasis on the U.S. customer’s behavior in having them remember a new PIN, or do we focus on how that customer will be received when they’re using the chip card outside the U.S. with only a signature,” Vanderhoof  says.

With chip and signature, the cardholder may have to explain to merchants why they do not need a PIN with their particular chip card when most other chip cards merchants are used to seeing do require PINs, he says.

Chase is among several credit card issuers that have chosen to move to EMV chip cards. That group also includes U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup and Bank of America Corp.

Those developments also align with Visa Inc.’s Aug. 9 announcement of plans to accelerate U.S. EMV adoption with a series of incentives and programs to shift liability in the next several years to noncompliant merchants (see story).

Chase expects to do some kind of marketing effort to promote its EMV chip cards, says Pandit, who did not provide details. Meantime, Chase is notifying customers of the EMV feature and benefits via email, direct mail and through its website.

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