The U.S. Payments Forum has released its winter 2017 market snapshot, providing updates on the status of the US EMV chip migration, 2017 priorities for accelerating merchant chip enablement and securing the card-not-present channel, and recently-released resources for the payments industry.
U.S. Payments Forum: top priorities for 2017
The U.S. Payments Forum, a cross-industry body focused on deployment of new and emerging payments technologies in the US, has been the source for EMV implementation guidance since the start of the migration in 2012, and recently expanded its scope to support the introduction and implementation of additional new and emerging payment technologies.
State of the Market: EMV Chip Migration
There has been steady progress in the US migration to chip payments. Today, 9 out of 10 Americans are commonly using chip cards at the approximately one-third of US merchant locations enabled to accept chip payments, and an estimated 79% of ATMs will have completed the migration by the end of this year.
In 2017, the U.S. Payments Forum will continue to address issues that arise from those parts of the ecosystem that have implemented EMV, and provide education and implementation guidance to merchant segments that have unique and/or challenging migration paths.
“The volume of chip-on-chip transactions has been growing at a steady rate, but we need to accelerate merchant enablement to reach critical mass and meet the goal of the chip migration: removing in-store counterfeit card fraud, the largest source of fraud in the US, from the system,” said Randy Vanderhoof, director of the U.S. Payments Forum.
“To help the industry meet this goal, the Forum is prioritizing outreach and educational programs for the ATM, petroleum, transit and hospitality industries, as well as the mid-size merchant community.”
Trending Topics: EMV in the Petroleum Environment
At the end of last year, American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa individually announced modified timelines for their respective EMV fraud liability shift policies for automated fuel dispensers in the US. The petroleum industry policy changes that were slated to take effect in October 2017 were modified to take effect in October 2020.
“The unique challenges facing the retail petroleum industry in upgrading their outside pay-at-the-pump systems to EMV have been an active part of the EMV migration discussions over the last year within the US Payments Forum and its Petroleum Working Committee,” said Vanderhoof.
“After the policy modifications were announced late last year, there were some misconceptions they may cause the petroleum industry to delay their migration plans. But what we’re really seeing is that the petroleum industry understands that they need to ‘put the pedal to the metal’ and use this extra time to complete the hardware and software upgrades at the pump to make sure their outdoor environments are enabled to accept chip as quickly as possible to avoid fraud risk.”
The U.S. Payments Forum and its Petroleum Working Committee will continue to help the petroleum industry move forward with its chip migration by identifying and resolving challenges associated with implementation and conducting educational outreach programs, including to payment technology providers servicing the industry.
U.S. Payments Forum Priorities: Addressing the Card-Not-Present Environment, Mobile Payments
In addition to aiding the chip migration to reduce in-store counterfeit card fraud, the U.S. Payments Forum is prioritizing the importance of addressing fraud in the card-not-present (CNP) environment in online and mobile channels. The Forum’s Card-Not-Present Fraud Working Committee and Mobile and Contactless Working Committee are launching projects to provide best practices and educational resources on how to help secure these channels.
“The industry has shown a high level of focus and urgency towards securing the in-person payment channel with EMV chip payments, and it is absolutely critical that the payments industry continue to simultaneously devote the same level of energy to work to avoid fraud increasing in the card-not-present channel,” said Vanderhoof.
“With our expanded focus and unique mix of payments stakeholders, the U.S. Payments Forum is in the position to provide the actionable implementation guidance that the industry needs to create successful multilayer fraud reduction programs and close off these channels to fraudsters.”
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