U.S. EMV’s 59 Percent POS Milestone

According to new research released by the Aite Group, 59 percent of U.S POS locations will be chip compatible by the end of this year.

“It’s good news that the pace of implementation has picked up,” says Thad Peterson, senior analyst with Aite Group, “but when the liability shift occurs, nearly half of all merchants will now be vulnerable to counterfeit card fraud, and the liability will be on them. Every organization in the payments space needs to increase its efforts to educate and inform the merchant community about the importance of moving to EMV chip and the value of implementing NFC.”

The strongest need for those increased education measures will likely be among small and medium-sized businesses.  The research demonstrates that while two thirds are aware of the upcoming liability shift – an improvement from previous results – that still leaves over 30 percent of SMB’s are are unaware.  Moreover, a large proportion of small and medium sized business owners have no immediate plans to upgrade their POS infrastructure, or remain undecided as to whether or not they will do so.  Most cite cost as their main consideration.

The situation among larger merchants is better – almost all have either begun or completed their conversion to chip capable terminals.  Another bright spots in the data were merchants planning to upgrade their POS.  According to the report many have already started putting the new systems into play, and 86 percent expected to be chip-enable by the end of the year.

Moreover, terminal proivers have also noted that nearly all new terminal being shipped at this time incorporate NFC – which will allow many EMV retailers to also accept NFC reliant mobile payment systems like Apple Pay or Google Wallet.