By most industry accounts about 25-30% of US merchants are ready to process EMV transactions on October 1, just three days away. This is not surprising as EMV enablement is complex, costly and just one part of the payments security layer (more on this later).
Most mid-to-large retailers are somewhere on a multi-year EMV readiness continuum. Many retailers we work with have an EMV road map and will be turning on EMV within the next 12 months. These merchants aren’t as concerned about liability shift as they are about overall payments security. They are prioritizing encryption (and tokenization) and evaluating semi-integrated solutions to isolate their POS from payments data before prioritizing EMV. We believe this is the right approach.
Here are some additional perspectives on EMV readiness. The following interview by Pymts’ Karen Webster with Stephanie Ericksen, VP of Global Risk Products at Visa Inc., provides Visa’s take on EMV readiness. And the attached summary/history of EMV from IRUG (International Retail User Group) and STJ Retail provides good context for EMV – EMV_in_the_US
