The new year always brings change — not only the resolutions we manage to keep, but change in the form of new laws, products, calendar deadlines, etc. One such change, slated for 2015, is the arrival, at last, of “EMV” cards as the default standard for American credit card users, those micro-chipped credit and debit cards that are already the standard in most European countries.
Tag: EMV
MasterCard Tips, the Final Chapter (Pt. III)
“First there was Heartbleed, then Shellshock, and now Poodle, yet another serious security vulnerability in yet another widely used piece of software that went unnoticed for years.”
Travel Season: Pack Bags, Swim Trunks, and EMV Chips
If you’re traveling abroad this summer, you might want to make sure you have at least one EMV-ready credit (or debit) card at your disposal. (The same might apply if you’re traveling a couple years into the future, after they become more widespread here in the U.S.!)
Updates: California Senate Lets EMV Law Lapse; The State of Security
We wanted to update you on an item we ran last week, wherein California’s State Senate was on the verge of issuing its own mandates for a switch over to EMV standards in card transactions, setting April 1, 2016 as the date.
However, according to a report in Computerworld, “the full Senate missed the voting deadline of May 30, ending its chances of passage until a new legislative session begins.”
EMV Vote In California While MasterCard Announces “Zero Liability” for PINs
The push for those chip-carrying EMV cards, which would make it more difficult for fraudulent transactions to occur, continues apace. In California, the State Senate is advancing a bill that would make April 1, 2016 — no fooling! — the date by which both retailers and card issuers would need to support the chip-and-PIN standard.
After The Breachin’: Chip-and-Pin Comes to Target
As was pointed out about the recent Heartbleed security hole that was so pervasive, it presented a chance — bad as it was — for a lot of companies to reinvent and update their security protocols, for consumers to opt in for “double login” options on various accounts (a password and a PIN, say), and for the general level of security, web-wide, to be enhanced.
Restaurant Owners Readying for EMV But Want More Card Protection
Plastic and digits are used in lieu of cash everywhere, but the food biz continues to find itself one of the most heavily “charged” industries, since everyone — whether it’s a fast food fish filet, sit-down bone-in ribeye, a morning tofu scramble, or anything else — has to eat.
Is Card Security Coming to U.S. Credit… “At Last?”
The wake of the biggest data breach in U.S. history continues with its fallout, including the news from targeted Target that the hackers originally were able to pilfer their way into the discount chain’s system by “using electronic credentials stolen from a vendor,” according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.
EMVs and Travel
As noted in this space before, new EMV (Europay/MasterCard/Visa) security standards are slowly coming to credit cards in America. Basically, the card relies on a chip, rather than a magnetic stripe, for its pertinent information, and its information is harder to clone, or hack.
