EMV technology paving the way to enhanced card safety

EMV Technology Paving the Way to Enhanced Card Safety

With the ever increasing threat of credit card theft, in both the physical and electronic world, changes to card security are changing as well. Most clients in the North American marketplace are used to a simple swipe and pay method, where the card data is encoded in the magnetic stripe on the back of the card (Hence all the signs near the RFID security disablers at checkout saying not to place your wallet or purse near them). These are not the safest because of crooks realizing that these cards data can be not only used for a one time transaction but cloned onto another card have been using devices placed in ATMs to scan not only the physical numbering of the card but also the data in the strip.

Many cardholders in foreign markets, especially Eastern Europe and Latin America have been taking protections against these techniques by not using street ATMs and always wiping finger prints from keypads. However there have been cases reported of keypads being tinkered with to record data entry in addition to the card data. With these risks, many card issuers are adopting smart chip technology in the form of EMV cards to replace the standard strip model.

EMVs rather than having static data which is similar to what you have on the front of the card itself use dynamic authentication. This prevents the cloning process or as it’s called “skimming”, by having transaction specific information which will change with each transaction. Should the card be cloned, it will not sync with the pattern needed for the dynamic authentication and will stop the fraud process in its tracks, despite the criminal believing at first that they have all the data they need.

A plus for those merchants who accept the adoption of the EMV technology comes in the form of Visa’s Technology Innovation Program eliminating the requirement of PCI DSS annual validation so long as 75% of Visa transactions come from the EMV chip enabled hardware which support contact and contactless chips.