Discover Financial Services is the latest card network to announce a conversion plan for the secure EMV chip-card standard in the U.S.
Its plan, which also affects Canada and Mexico, requires acquirers and direct-connect merchants to handle EMV card payments by next year. The chip-card standard, commonly called "chip and PIN" because it is often paired with a PIN, is used in many countries to improve security over magnetic stripe cards.
Last year, Visa announced a conversion plan for accepting EMV cards. It set staggered deadlines that begin in October, 2012 and end in October, 2017 (
Discover said it will support online and offline authentication. It will support PIN transactions as well as signature ones. It will support contact payments and contactless ones, such as from a mobile phone built with an embedded chip.
Discover, of Riverwoods, Ill., says it accepted its first U.S. EMV payment in January at a Wal-Mart location. In other countries, Discover has supported the EMV standard for three years.
"Enabling EMV in North America is a significant step in Discover's approach toward emerging payments, and clearly a necessary one," said Troy Bernard, Discover's global head of chip payment technology, said in a press release.
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