Retailers who thought the roar surrounding EMV would reach a lull after Oct. 1 are in for a bit of a rude awakening. After all, there’s still work to be done.
In the second day of hearings for the U.S. House Small Business Committee on Oct. 21, experts from the Electronic Payments Coalition traded opinions with legislators on how best to approach the issue of payment security. In a statement to the committee, Sam Fabens, spokesperson for the EPC, claimed that large retailers aren’t doing all they could be doing to help their smaller counterparts.
“Instead of providing Congress with useful information about how to help small businesses protect consumer data, large national retail associations are using this hearing to push for a ‘security’ solution – PIN – that wouldn’t have done anything to stop the breaches at Target, Home Depot or Michaels,” Fabens said.
Fabens continued to explain that there needs to be a greater push for “common sense data security standards” for all entities involved in the payments industry. Calling PINs “a static data element,” Fabens rejected ideas that adding them to the existing EMV infrastructure would have any appreciable effect on security.
“Protecting the electronic payments ecosystem requires everyone to do their part,” Fabens said. “We hope that retail trade associations will use EMV as a security tool and not a political football.”
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