Amex Gives Merchants EMV Chargeback Break

American Express has announced changes to its EMV chargeback policy in order to ease the transition as merchants migrate their POS systems to be EMV-compliant.

This move is aimed at helping merchants limit their fraud losses, and as of the end of August of this year, merchants will not be liable for counterfeit fraud chargebacks for any transaction under $25. Amex will also limit the number of counterfeit fraud chargebacks to a total of 10 per card account.

Under these new policies, the card issuer, instead of the merchant, will cover the liability for the additional counterfeit fraud transaction disputed from a card account after those 10 chargebacks. But it’s worth noting that this limit does not prohibit a cardmember from disputing more fraudulent transactions.

“Combating fraud is an ongoing priority for American Express,” said Mike Matan, VP of global network business for Amex. “We recognize the migration to EMV in the U.S. is an effort that will take time, which is why we are making these policy changes in order to provide flexibility to those merchants that may need more time to upgrade their point-of-sale terminals to accept EMV chip cards.”

To give merchants more time to become EMV-compliant, these changes will remain in effect until April 2018. According to research conducted by Amex, the company found that 40 percent of its counterfeit fraud chargebacks in the U.S. are for transactions under $25.

Amex recently announced the launch of Quick Chip, a service designed to provide a faster route to process EMV chip card transactions at the POS. Amex Quick Chip uses a technology that is said to help merchants provide their consumers with a frictionless and faster in-store checkout experience.

For cardmembers who pay using their EMV-enabled chip cards, Amex Quick Chip is available for those merchant processors. The service is available through a software update for those merchants. Amex Quick Chip works with the technical standards used in Quick Chip services offered by other payment networks. As a result, processors can offer their merchants the ability to implement these solutions for all card brands.