When Visa first introduced a roadmap to bring chip technology to U.S. payments five years ago, it set out to improve the security of merchant systems and eliminate counterfeit fraud. As each year brings a new series of high-profile security breaches, the importance and pace of this transition to chip technology has only accelerated.
This chip technology works by generating new codes for each individual credit or debit transaction. On cards without the embedded chip, account information stored on magnetic stripes never changes and can be copied, making accounts vulnerable to counterfeit fraud. Chip cards create unique, one-time use codes for every transaction so that stolen information cannot be used to create counterfeit cards.
Today we are one year into the move to chip technology, and already, progress has been encouraging. Explore the infographic below to see how the industry has forged ahead and equipped businesses with chip technology they need to make payments more secure.
Learn more about how Visa is helping to promote the secure payment innovations that will help drive the digital economy of the future.
This article was produced on behalf of Visa by Quartz creative services with contributions by Stefanie O’Connell and not by the Quartz editorial staff.
SOURCES: U.S. card figures per VisaNet data and operating certificates provided to Visa by client financial institutions as of end September 2016; US chip merchant location data based on VisaNet data as of end September 2016. Merchants that have completed an EMV transaction in the last 30 days considered chip-activated; Aite figure on merchant adoption from “EMV Estimates for EMV and NFC: U.S. Merchant Implementation Status, 2016” by Thad Peterson; Counterfeit fraud reduction at fully chip-enabled U.S. merchants for the month of June 2016 compared to June 2015. Fully chip enabled merchants defined as locations where 80% of card present payment volume is chip-on-chip. Data includes both U.S.-issued credit and debit cards; Transaction number and volume based on VisaNet data for U.S. locations with chip transactions as of end September 2016. © VISA 2016. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.