As of October of 2015, retail stores and banks are going to be required to accept and issue a new type of credit card. Instead of the traditional magnetic strip cards, they will be issuing chip-enabled credit cards with RFID technology. These required upgrades are going to amount to an estimated $8.65 billion being anywhere from $500 to $3,000 per payment terminal. As you can imagine, retailers and banks across the United States are making haste to prepare for the technology switch.
What Does This Mean for the Consumer?
These new chip cards are actually an upgrade from the traditional magnetic strip cards and are more secure, but there are many that aren’t convinced this is a good change. For them it’s a question of whether or not this technology is going to do the trick when it comes to protecting cardholder data.
Just like the current, magnetic strip cards, the new chip cards will maintain the requirement of a signature. In other countries, such as various places in Europe, the credit cards only require a PIN which has been argued to be a more secure method. However, banks and retailers in the United States nudged for the signature method because of it’s previous established familiarity in America.
Due to some recent increase in stolen cards and database hacks, there is growing support for the new technology. Though this technological switch cannot project us against such instances as what happened at Home Depot and Target, it will increase protection against criminals’ ability to copy your card’s information to create a fraudulent version of it. Seeing that fake cards make up about 37% of credit card fraud in the United States, this growing support may be what is needed for a successful transition from the old to the new.
Are you ready for the switch? Leave a comment below and let us know how you feel about the new chip-enabled cards!
