Over the past several years in America, EMV chip cards have replaced older, mag-stripe only cards. Customers now have the option of inserting their chip card, rather than sliding it, for transactions. The result: A safer, more secure transaction. However, many businesses have been slow to accommodate this. If you’ve missed the boat, Moolah, as well as the Poynt Smart Terminal can get you updated. But first: Is it necessary to have an EMV chip card reader?
The EMV chip card is a card that allows you to insert a chip, rather than swiping the card, verifying that the card is authentic, thereby providing more secure transactions. EMV technology has been prominent in other countries, including Canada, as well as many European countries, much longer than it has here, and recently it has become the only card option for cards from American banks. EMV cards safeguard security, and can contain much more information than magnetic stripes, making them much harder to fake. While magnetic stripes on cards can be fairly easily cloned, EMV cards prevent cloning. EMV cards are also much harder to steal information from with a card skimmer. Thus, EMV cards are much safer to use. Because of this, major card companies started distributing EMV cards in the U.S., and now they are the norm.
After card companies began issuing chip cards in America, businesses were slow to adapt. Then the laws changed. Essentially, liability for fraudulent transactions that EMV chip cards could prevent, shifted onto businesses, if they were not operating in an EMV-compliant manner. Some businesses, like gas stations, had longer to adopt this new system, due to the cost of the change. At this point, all businesses in the U.S. face an increased risk of liability for fraudulent card transactions if they don’t accept EMV, and the majority have updated their equipment. Some payment processing companies even began charging EMV non-compliance fees for businesses that don’t upgrade to EMV card readers. In short, in order to protect customers, as well as yourself, EMV is the obvious choice.
It is important to be able to accept EMV chip cards. Doing so will help you safeguard customers’ data, showing your customers that you care about keeping them safe, while protecting you from liability for credit card fraud that could take place because you didn’t switch over to an EMV reader. The cost of upgrading to a card terminal that reads EMV chip cards is also not as much as you would think. You’d actually have a hard time finding a terminal that doesn’t have EMV chip ability, and some, like Moolah, even provide options for free. We at Moolah are happy to provide the Poynt Smart Terminal to all our customers because we understand the importance of accepting a variety of payments, especially EMV chip cards. The Poynt Smart Terminal is a card terminal that accepts all major card payments, including EMV chip cards, as well as NFC touchless payments such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and provides a variety of options to businesses to streamline the payment process. We believe you will be satisfied with the Poynt Smart Terminal, and think that is just one of many reasons why you should consider Moolah for your payment processing needs.