Wells Fargo plans to embed credit cards with an EMV microchip for about 15,000 of its customers that travel abroad. America is one of the last developed nations that rely on magnetic stripes for credit card transactions. “Almost 10 million U.S. consumers experienced credit-card acceptance problems abroad in 2008, costing about $4 billion in lost transactions for merchants and $447 million in revenue for card issuers, according to a 2009 study by Aite Group. A common problem facing U.S. consumers is that some merchants abroad are unfamiliar with magnetic-stripe cards and may refuse to accept them.” JP Morgan plans to race against Wells Fargo to bring EMV to its wealthiest consumers by June. Although they are focusing on their highest spenders they will follow with standard card holders shortly after .It seems that credit card companies have a race to see who can micro chip us first. In Canada all ATM’s must be compatible with EVM technology by the end of 2012. It seems we are far behind the times. I’m curious as to why it has taken this long if Europe has been using EMV for years?? With so many credit card companies needing help it seems this investment would have come long before now.
2 comments:
I think the banks should have notified their customers before hand about the problems abroad with credit card transactions. With all of the economic problems the United States has the last thing we need is to be one of the last country's to upgrade our cards with the new chips. The fact that American consumers have to deal with yet another problem is an outrage. We dont need anymore hoops to jump through.
I have heard about people using credit card scanners attached to a battery pack stealing credit card numbers just by walking next to someone even if their credit card is in their wallet. It is called electronic pickpocketing. It seems to be most common in Europe so I wonder if their cards make it easier to steal or if the American card is easier.
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