Intuit Launches QuickBooks Mobile EMV Card Reader

Ahead of the October 2015 transition to the EMV liability standards, Intuit is offering the QuickBooks Mobile EMV Card reader, currently available to small businesses via pre-order.

Intuit said Tuesday (June 2) that its $30 reader integrates sales transactions within QuickBooks Online, and also with desktops, using the QuickBooks GoPayment app. Support for select versions of desktop and POS technologies will be announced at a later date, the company said.

Intuit also noted in the release that a relatively low 42 percent of small businesses plan to make the switch to EMV technology; that same figure also represents the portion of small business owners who said they had not heard of the EMV liability shift deadline. That comes despite the fact that smaller merchants must be ready to accept “next generation” cards that feature embedded smart chips. If not, they could be on the hook for fraud tied to “fraudulent card-present transactions,” the company said in its statement.

The new liability protocol, termed EMV and short for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, aims to short circuit fraud by boosting card security features that are in turn already present in the magnetic stripes that are ubiquitous to payment cards. That comes through an identifier unique to each transaction.

“The biggest barriers for small businesses to become EMV-compliant are cost and lack of time or resources required to research terminals,” said Inuit’s Eric Dunn, who is the company’s senior vice president of payments and commerce solutions. “We want them to know we’re beside them on this journey to a more secure payments infrastructure, and are providing an affordable solution as well as equipping them with resources to ease any burdens.”

In a recent interview with PYMNTS.com, Chris Lee, who is president of North American strategic partnerships and emerging markets at Moneris Solutions, said that the lack of “EMV-readiness” among small businesses may have real near term costs. One scenario would be real and direct costs tied to higher incidences of fraud, the executive said, with real financial losses as a result of data breaches. Consumers are also gaining knowledge about the chip technology and will increasingly expect it to be offered by merchants, said Lee.

 
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