If your business accepts credit card payments with a swipe machine you could be liable for counterfeit fraud! Scared? You should be! Europay, Mastercard, and Visa created a standard for smart payment cards, payment terminals, and automated teller machines. This standard maintained by EMVCo, a consortium consisting of American Express, China UnionPay, Discover, JCB, Mastercard, and VISA.
What is the new standard and how does it impact your business? We found a great infographic from VISA to explain.
Liability of counterfeit charges will shift from the card issuer (e.g. MasterCard, Visa, and American Express) to merchants in October of this year. If a fraudulent customer pays you with a credit card with a smart chip but you only have a magnetic strip reader, then your business will be held liable for damages. In other words, if an individual or company disputes charges made on their credit card as fraudulent, the business where those charges originated (you) may be held liable and have to absorb the cost of those charges . Not sure if the customer is using a smart chipped credit card? If a credit card has a smart chip, you can see the chip as a gold rectangle towards the left on the front of the card.
If your company uses magnetic credit card readers, please be sure to consider replacing them with devices which can read a smart chip by October 1st!
