Credit Unions Will Miss EMV Deadline

The countdown to EMV continues to run down, as of the publication of this article there will be (August 5) there are less than 500 days until EMV adoption will be required, and it is looking increasingly likely that credit unions will be missing the deadline en masse.

“Credit unions are definitely gearing up and picking up the pace,” said Barney Moore, manager of card consulting services for CSCU, an association of credit unions affiliated with payment processor FIS, reports the Credit Union Times. “But it seems unlikely that they will have gotten it done by next October.”

As many as half of all credit union could miss the deadline, a concern as credit union backed credit cards will cease to qualify for fraud protection in the event of a data breach that leave card data compromised and consumer funds lost.

“We are urging credit unions that might not be ready to pull the trigger to at least get the project started and get into a queue for a chance to get EMV cards,” Moore noted.

EMV is an expensive change for smaller crdit union, with chip embedded cards running at approximately twice the price of mag stripe cards. Contactless payment tech further ups the bills.

As of the beginning of August, only 2 percent of CSCU’s 2,600 member credit unions were either done with or close to completing their EMV conversion.