It’s been two years since the Payment Card Industry’s 3.0 standards, including EMV and point-to-point encryption (P2PE), became a mandate within most of the retail industry. At that time, the liability of fraudulent credit card transactions shifted from banks to merchants who did not employ chip-enabled equipment and processing.
The self-service industry, in particular, had to sit up and pay heed to these new rules. In the past, it was fairly easy for thieves to use stolen or duplicated credit cards to make purchases at kiosks before the owner of the card could even notify the issuer that their card was missing or compromised. Likewise, dishonest consumers could readily use a self-service device to make a purchase, and then later report the transaction as ‘not mine’. Even if a signature was captured at the kiosk, it was too easy for someone to sign the name of their favorite Disney character, and later deny that they swiped their card at the machine.
With two years of data under our belts now, results on PCI’s efforts are coming to light. Visa offered some very encouraging news in a recently published report. Merchants who made the switch to EMV have seen a 66% reduction in transactions using counterfeit or fraudulent cards. Since 2015, the number of chip transactions has increased dramatically by 265%, with almost $60B being processed.
While gas stations aren’t required to accept EMV chip cards until 2020, the implementation of EMV-enabled card readers and processing is a ‘no-brainer’ for all other self-service devices. Since signature capture is not really a viable option to prevent fraud at a kiosk, EMV and PCI 3.0 standards now offer security and peace-of-mind to all merchants implementing self-service. EMV chip cards generate a unique crypto-security code for each transaction, greatly inhibiting the possibility for counterfeit cards to be produced. Forcing use of personal PINs with each transaction makes an EMV transaction essentially fraud-proof. Furthermore, the use of P2PE equipment to encrypt all card data from the point of input takes the self-service device out of PCI scope, any prevents hardware or software skimming of card holder information.
The kiosk industry is stronger than ever thanks to the growing desire for self-service among consumers, and by retailers looking to improve operational efficiency while enhancing customer service. While the cost to implement EMV is higher than traditional card swipe transactions, the benefit of implementing chip technology far outweighs the risks of fraud and data security. If you’re in the midst of planning a self-service deployment, don’t even consider it an option anymore… you must implement EMV for your customer’s security and your own ability to sleep peacefully at night.