EMV

Visa Inc. pushed back its deadline for installing chip-card readers in U.S. gasoline pumps after station owners complained they didn’t have enough time to complete the multibillion-dollar upgrades.

The spread of new payment technology and omnichannel commerce are changing the way people shop during the holiday season, even in brick-and-mortar stores. Here are a few noteworthy trends this season.

Visa Inc. has clarified its position on EMV debit card routing to address growing concern among merchants that the card brand's rules were forcing those transactions onto the Visa network rather than allowing merchants to choose among less expensive options.

Merchants’ frustrations with the painful U.S. EMV shift could come to a head this week when Black Friday kicks off the crucial holiday shopping season with large swaths of the merchant landscape unable to handle EMV transactions, more than a year after the U.S. EMV liability shift.

The EMV migration has been sluggish, but it's a vital part of protecting cardholders.

While around 70% of U.S. merchant locations still aren’t ready to handle EMV card transactions, Atlanta-based merchant acquirer Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bank, can tell the opposite story: 70% of its merchant clients will be EMV-enabled by the end of this year.

Typically merchants post signs at EMV terminals to tell their customers how they work, or that they should keep swiping. Starbucks is taking a more forward-thinking approach by treating EMV frustration as a mobile marketing opportunity.

As a payments industry professional, Reetika Grewal took the situation in stride, but her experience using mobile wallets and EMV exemplifies an issue many consumers are facing.

There are security gaps in chip cards that are vulnerable to new types of skimming. Biometrics can help solve this problem, and will also prove handy as EMV cards migrate to smartphones.

The U.S.’s long journey to EMV adoption will remain a major focus for the U.S. Payments Forum, but contactless and mobile payments technology will also start to get serious attention from a new industry working group.