Visa Inc. no longer will require merchants outside the U.S. to annually validate their compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard if three-fourths of their transactions comply with the EMV chip-and-PIN standard, the network announced Feb. 9.
Under its Technology Innovation Program, Visa will exempt merchants from compliance for any year in which at least 75% of their Visa contact and contactless card transactions originate from EMV terminals whose technology provides additional layers of authentication and protection from fraud.
Merchants may qualify for the program beginning March 31. Visa Europe is supporting a similar program, Visa said in a press release.
Eligible merchants include those that previously have validated PCI data-security standards compliance, provided a plan to come into compliance and have not been involved in a recent material breach of cardholder data.
“Visa has repeatedly underscored the need for authentication [services] to move to dynamic-data technologies such as EMV chip,” Ellen Richey, Visa chief enterprise risk officer, said in a press release.
Adding a political twist, U.S. merchants are not eligible because the U.S. payment system relies on magnetic stripe cards, Visa noted in the release. Although no mandate exists to convert the U.S. to a chip-and-PIN environment, Visa asserted in the release that the Federal Reserve’s proposed new debit-interchange rules pose fresh obstacles to U.S. EMV adoption (
“With the U.S. facing government price controls on debit and restrictive routing and exclusivity rules, it is not feasible or appropriate to drive the market toward major infrastructure investments, especially in an environment where financial institutions could lose billions in revenue as a result of the regulations,” Bill Sheedy, Visa group executive for the Americas, said in the release.
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