Discover Adds Quick Chip Option for EMV

Discover is offering its version of Quick Chip for merchants to speed up the EMV chip card checkout process at the point of sale.

Visa, MasterCard and American Express all introduced similar products in the past week, as the four major card brands in the U.S. have now addressed an EMV migration pain point — that consumers would have to wait up to 10 seconds before taking their chip card out of the reader during the authorization process.

Quick Chip technology is designed to trim that process down to between two and three seconds.

Discover's Quick Chip process will streamline the checkout process for all chip cards leveraging Discover, Diners Club International and Pulse Networks.

“Discover is providing this new option in order to offer merchants and cardholders a streamlined checkout experience,” Ellie Smith, head of the Chip Center of Excellence at Discover, stated in a June 23 press release. “This initiative further expands and complements Discover’s wide range of existing programs that support chip deployment.”

Discover says Quick Chip will reduce terminal certification requirements and be compatible with the technical standards offered by other payment networks, so merchants can seamlessly offer cardholders a faster checkout experience across all chip cards they accept.

Merchants that want to upgrade terminals to include Discover Quick Chip will work through their acquirer, payment processor, or point-of-sale provider.