Visa Says Chip Cards Reduced Counterfeit Fraud By 66 Percent

Visa, the payments company, revealed Monday (Dec. 18) in an infographic that counterfeit fraud is down in the U.S. at merchants that are using chip-enabled cards.

According to the Visa press release, counterfeit fraud at U.S. chip-enabled merchants was down 66 percent in June of 2017 compared to June of 2015. What’s more, U.S. financial institutions have issued 462 million chip cards to consumers, and 2.5 million, or 55 percent, of U.S. storefronts now accept cards with the EMV chip. According to the company, as of September, there were $59.4 billion of chip transactions, up from $4.8 billion in September of 2015.

The start of 2017 marked the first full year since the U.S. started moving to EMV chip cards. At that time, Visa said that counterfeit fraud had dropped by 52 percent, and was down 14 percent across all merchants during that first year.

According to Visa, during 2016, the number of Visa chip cards issued in the U.S. reached 408.1 million, an increase of 92 percent. The number of merchants who rolled out chip-enabled terminals totaled 1.81 million at the end of 2016, more than doubling. Currently, 39 percent of all merchant locations have the terminals, handling 49 percent of the payment volume. Visa noted that 82 percent of the merchants that rolled out chip card terminals are small and medium-sized businesses.

In April of last year, the payments company announced the launch of its Quick Chip for EMV solution, designed to speed up checkout times and make the “chip and dip” card experience for consumers and merchants as quick as, well, the swipe. This solution is aimed at enabling faster checkout, streamlined processing and a simple implementation.