US: Visa, MasterCard to ease transition to chips as antitrust suit looms

Visa and MasterCard on Thursday offered an olive branch to merchants who haven’t yet started accepting more secure chip cards, saying they would speed up the certification process for check-out terminals and limit the costs that retailers will have to incur for counterfeit transactions.

The moves follow widespread complaints from merchants around the country since October. That was when new payment-industry rules shifted the financial responsibility for the cost of fraud to the merchants from card-issuing financial institutions.

Merchants contend that their transition to chip cards has been delayed by certification bottlenecks, forcing them to pay for fraud even when they have the proper equipment in place to start accepting chip cards. A Florida supermarket chain filed an antitrust lawsuit in March against Visa, MasterCard and assorted banks over the issue.

The changes announced Thursday are the latest part of a difficult transition in the US payments industry, which is adopting the new chip cards years after other countries. In addition to the complaints about certification delays, merchants and shoppers have complained that the chip-card transactions take too long at the check-out line.

Full Content: The Wall Street Journal

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