Does your credit card have a microchip on it? It soon will. And if you are either a consumer or an employer, you had best know about them. Already a year ago in the Netherlands not only did all shops already have chip card readers, but the sliders on the side were covered up too- most vendors were surprised that anyone still had a strip card (silly Americans, eh?). This silly American was shocked to discover that pretty much everywhere in the WORLD had EMV (what they are calling 'chip cards' here) cards EXCEPT the United States. See the above map for 2012 to get an idea.
Well, it is changing - yesterday when I spoke with someone at USAA I was informed of the option to change my card to a 'chip card', free of cost, for added security, and that by 2016 Mastercard would only be producing chip cards. Based on what I have read, October 2015 is the "liability shift deadline" - at this point, everything changes. Liability for fraudulent transactions will shift to whomever offers the lesser technology (chip tech being the highest) - so, if fraud occurs on someone who has a chip card, the liability for that fraud will rest either on the business that took it (if they did not have a chip-card reader), OR on the bank that issued the card IF the business had a chip reader but the bank did not issue a chip card.
How to force people to upgrade? Risk their wallet, that's how. Fraud has been shifting to the US as the ENTIRE rest of the world has become more 'secure' here, so now credit card companies are fighting back. Chip cards will require you to either sign or use a PIN with every credit card transaction.
However, things don't stop there- EMV tech is not just limited to the readers above that you will mostly see. There are also contact-free readers where all you do is tap your card to it, and it reads it... and even more, EMV chips can be put on things BESIDES cards... like cell phones, or a key ring. So yes - while cards themselves are unlikely to go out of use too immediately, cards will shortly become unnecessary and microchip payment will be the norm.
A lot of people are unaware of this new shift, and a lot of people here in the states don't even realise that we are pretty much behind the rest of the world... even third world countries already had at least a few in 2012! So prepare yourselves, folks - we are about to go on hyperdrive and within the space of a few years, go from chip-less, to micro-chip based transactions.
