EMV In US Still Has A Long Way To Go

By Lars Pedersen, Creditcall CEO via the Creditcall Blog

The latest EMVCo numbers were published just before the New Year. While the latest numbers only reflect transactions up to June 2016, they tell a compelling story about how far the United States still needs to go before EMV becomes mainstream. The report shows that, despite being 8 months past the EMV liability shift of Oct. 2015, only 7.2% of card-present transactions used EMV in June 2016.

57 percent of merchants reported that while they have installed EMV equipment, they cannot enable it because they still are awaiting system certification. Of those, 60 percent have been waiting six months or longer.

In recent blogs, we’ve discussed why adoption numbers aren’t higher. Millions of terminals still need upgrading. A slow certification process means than many terminals that are deployed aren’t even activated for EMV. In the "State of Retail Payments 2016 Study" by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Forrester Research, 86 percent of retailers expected to have EMV payment terminals in place by the end of 2016. However, 57 percent of merchants reported that while they have installed EMV equipment, they cannot enable it because they still are awaiting system certification. Of those, 60 percent have been waiting six months or longer. There was — and still is — a lot of confusion and misinformation among software developers and payment companies about certifications.