MasterCard Releases Six-Month EMV Report Card

The adoption of EMV in the U.S. has shown continued momentum in the six months since the official liability shift last October.

Consumers are increasingly embracing the notion of dipping their card when paying in-store and both card issuers and merchants have made progress with EMV adoption as well, MasterCard said on Thursday (March 31).

“Chip technology is an essential upgrade to better protect consumers and businesses,” Catherine Murchie, SVP of North American Enterprise Security Solutions for MasterCard, explained in a press release.

“Other countries that have already adopted chips have seen significant reductions in counterfeit card fraud over time – as much as 60, 70 or even 80 percent. The U.S. industry continues to work together on EMV to generate similar results.”

The payments technology company provided its own update on how its cardholders, partners and customers specifically have fared with the move to EMV chip technology.

According to MasterCard, more than two-thirds (67 percent) of its branded consumer credit cards issued in the U.S. now have chips, representing a 51 percent jump in the number of its chip-enabled cards in the market since the Oct. 1, 2015 liability shift.

Roughly 1.2 million U.S. merchant locations allow consumers to use their chip cards, an increase of 121 percent, and approximately 1 million local and regional merchants have turned on terminals to accept chip card payments.