What's New in Credit Card Security?

Come October 1, 2015 there are big changes coming to the payment industry.

The US is the last major market that is still using the old swipe and sign cards.

The familiar card technology is blamed for the fact that the US accounts for nearly half of the world's credit card fraud while only accounting for a quarter of the transactions.

Here are some of the highlights from an article that showed up in my inbox from the Missouri Restaurant Association about the changes taking place on October 1, 2015:

• Swipe and sign credit cards are being replaced with cards with a chip and will require either a signature or a PIN at the point of sale
• The way they are incenting everyone to move to the new system is by placing liability on the party that doesn't comply by the date ie:
  • If a customer uses a swipe and sign card the liability is on them.
  • If a customer has a new chip card, but an establishment doesn't have chip technology and forces the client to use a swipe and sign card the liability is on the merchant
• The new chip based cards will erase themselves if they sense that they are being tampered with.
• The NRA predicts that the industry will lag behind other industries in adopting this technology with the main reason being that there doesn't seem to be a lot fraud in our industry.

Has anyone started looking into this at all?

How are the payment vendors handling this?

Are the fees and equipment more expensive?

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