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The introduction of new EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) technology has enhanced the security of debit and credit card transactions by replacing standard cards with ones embedded with small computer chips that’s extremely hard to counterfeit. The addition of the chips makes the cards much harder to counterfeit and provides for additional authentication and security during point-of-sale transactions. The manner in which EMV cards are physically handled during a sales transaction is somewhat different than with older cards, however. Rather than being swiped through a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, EMV cards are inserted (or dipped) into the terminal and left in place for the entire transaction so that the reader and card can talk back and forth. EMV cards can be either swiped or dipped (since not all merchants are yet set up with EMV-compliant card readers), and that duality has led to some confusion among consumers about whether liability for fraudulent transactions shifts depending upon how an EMV card is processed. Specifically, some consumers have heard rumors that swiping an EMV card rather than dipping it leaves them (rather than the merchant or card issuer) liable for any ensuing fraudulent use of the card. The issue of fraud liability has evolved with the introduction of EMV cards, but that liability has not been passed back onto cardholders. According to CreditCards.com, that evolution solely concerns determining whether the merchant or the card issuer is the party bears liability for fraud in any given case — cardholders themselves remain protected from liability, regardless of whether their EMV cards are swiped or dipped: What the new rules govern is whether merchants or card issuers (i.e., banks and credit unions) are liable in cases of credit card fraud, with responsibility now falling upon whichever party was least EMV-compliant: A separate article on that web site illustrated the liability shifts with a chart: Many consumers have noticed that although some merchants have seemingly upgraded to EMV-compliant POS terminals, the card slots on those terminals are puzzlingly non-operational (and thus require that customers swipe their chipped cards). As the New York Times noted in March 2016, that situation is the result of merchants' having to wait for certification of their terminals: Kaner told the newspaper he believed consumers were taking advantage of the interim period to file suspicious chargebacks due to the shift in liability: Terry Crowley, CEO of processor TranSend, told KrebsonSecurity that consumer dishonesty was a larger issue than consumer liability during the transition period: It's possible cardholders have confused information intended for merchants as being directed at them.Processor Square published a short instructional guide for the EMV card liability shift that might have caused such confusion among consumers who didn't realize the pronoun you referred to merchants and not cardholders: But, in short, consumers don't have to adjust to fraud liability changes with EMV cards. That's an issue for merchants and card issuers to sort out between them.
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