EMV

Resourceful crooks will relentlessly probe systems, processes and people until they find a weakness or an opportunity. That weakness is the magnetic strip that still exists on all EMV cards, according to Nathan Horn-Mitchem, senior vice president and chief information security officer at Provident Bank.

The card networks recently admitted what consumers have long suspected—card signatures have become worthless for authentication at the point of sale. But that's not the end of this story.

KFC is finally converting its point of sale terminals to accept EMV chip cards, opting for a semi-integrated system to accept all payment types.

There are still millions of merchants in the U.S. clinging to relic point of sale methods — and they are not easily swayed by fancy new touchscreens and mobile wallets. This means companies such as Verifone must go to greater lengths, just to meet them halfway.

As gas stations add EMV-chip card acceptance at the pump, they will also find themselves rebuilding systems for loyalty programs and special offers that were reliant on their older hardware.

Many of the same protections for mobile payments, such as tokenization and single-use keys, can come into play to protect in-car payments, according to Jim Carroll, chief technology officer at Mobica.

Banks and cardholders will be able to verify purchases, increase credit limit, add cards immediately, provide feedback to retailers, receive on-demand coupons, or upgrade card benefits.

NMI, which provides payments gateway services for resellers of payment services, has purchased U.K.-based Creditcall to expand its EMV and contactless capabilities so it can support retail, e-commerce, mobile and unattended payments through a single platform.

There’s a widely held belief that clamping down on fraud in one area will lead to it popping up somewhere else. There is some truth to this — fraudsters favor the points of least resistance. But there are also major exceptions.

There are still regions where contactless and EMV cards are slow to roll out, and Mastercard is working to bring these markets up to speed so that they are ready for future innovations.