EMVCo: Global Circulation of EMV Chip Cards Tops 12B

The circulation of EMV chip cards has increased by 1.1 billion in the past 12 months, hitting 12 billion in circulation at the end of last year, according to an EMVCo press release Wednesday (June 8).

The issuance and adoption of EMV chip cards also spiked worldwide in the past year, with 68% of cards issued having an EMV chip and 90% of card-present transactions conducted globally having used EMV chip technology, the release stated.

EMVCo shared the data at its EMV User Meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, an annual two-day event for the payments industry and associated stakeholders.

See also: Consumers Warming to Biometrics, Still Worry About Fraud

“The globally deployed EMV chip infrastructure makes it possible for chip technology to be used consistently anywhere in the world to help deliver the same result — more secure, seamless and reliable in-store payments,” said EMVCo Executive Committee Chair Robin Trickel in the release. “With 12 billion EMV cards deployed worldwide, and issuance and adoption seeing sustained increases globally, EMV chip provides a trusted foundation that is supporting the ongoing shift away from cash and toward digital payments.”

Read also: 4 Ways Businesses Can Better Handle Fraud Risk

EMVCo is planning to continue driving the advancement of EMV chip specifications with “merchants, issuers, acquirers, payment networks, financial institutions, manufacturers, technology providers and testing laboratories across the globe,” Trickel added in the release.

Key initiatives being discussed at the meeting will cover EMV contact chip specification enhancements to support Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) as well as support for “emerging use-cases and new ways to pay,” according to the release.

Brazil has been making use of EMV chip and PIN cards for more than a decade, Luis Silva, founder and CEO of payment network provider CloudWalk, told PYMNTS earlier this month. But there are still challenges for payment providers trying to enter the Latin American market, including the need to support consumers who expect to pay in installments, a longtime and common practice.

See more: CloudWalk on Meeting Latin America’s Growing Demand for Digital Payments