Attention Issuers: Keep Your EMV Data Prep Where You Can See It

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As the payment schemes push integrated circuit (IC) smart card technology as the preferred payment method for its fraud-busting features, card issuers will have to adjust their card data preparation and issuance practices accordingly.

After more than four decades of service in the financial card industry, magnetic stripe technology may not be going away anytime soon. But it will no longer dominate the card issuance scene. For institutions that have dialed in their magnetic stripe issuance processes into a precise art, the shift to issuing increased numbers of IC smart cards will require smart planning and impending decisions about how much of the card issuance process to outsource. Before making a hasty decision based on mag stripe issuance paradigms, it is important to understand that smart card issuance is whole new beast.

Bolstering the security of financial transaction cards has been an ongoing process since they were first issued in the 1960’s. EMV is the latest round of improved security and it has been implemented in Europe, Canada and other countries worldwide. EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, the original developers of this IC card security standard. EMVCo, owned by American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa, manages, maintains and enhances the EMV specifications to assure global interoperability. This specification defines the requirements for payment cards, point of sale terminals and ATM’s.

Adding EMV capability to improve transaction security comes with a price as a new set of requirements is added to the card issuance process. The card personalization process for EMV involves sophisticated data preparation and key management tasks that are new and additive to the present magnetic stripe card issuance process. This paper will deal with these additional tasks and provide guidance on how best to move forward in this new environment. As the payment schemes has put in place incentives for US card issuers and merchants to start the migration to EMV, these issuers have the opportunity to learn from their early-adopter counterparts around the world to minimize the risk and cost incurred by such a migration.

One of the biggest lessons learned? Since EMV issuance is more complex than magnetic stripe card issuance, issuers have much more key and cardholder data to protect, which increases their risk and exposure if cardholder data is breached by third party organizations. Let’s demystify EMV a bit to show you why.

Click here to download the full white paper.