American Express Announces EMV Roadmap

American Express became the latest card company to announced a roadmap to adopt EMV in the United States. EMV, the global standard for credit and debit card payments named after its original developers -- Europay, MasterCard and Visa -- features cards with embedded microprocessor chips that store and protect encrypted account user data.

American Express said it "will work alongside other industry participants to drive interoperability across the U.S. and other countries and support chip-based technology for chip and PIN, chip and Signature, contactless and mobile transactions."

American Express is targeting April 2013 as the date by which processors must be able to support American Express EMV chip-based contact, contactless and mobile transactions. Also, the company said beginning October 2013 merchants will be eligible to receive relief from PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) reporting requirements if the merchants' point-of-sale (POS) acceptance locations -- where at least 75 percent of their transactions occur -- are enabled to process American Express EMV chip-based contact and contactless transactions.

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American Express also said it will institute a Fraud Liability Shift (FLS) policy, effective October 2015, that will transfer liability for certain types of fraudulent transactions away from the party that has the most secure form of EMV technology.

In May, Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard announced the formation of cross-industry group designed to foster collaboration and alignment between networks, issuers, merchants, acquirers, processors, terminal manufacturers, card manufacturers and other groups in the implementation of EMV technology in the United States.

Last August, San Francisco-based Visa also announced its own EMV roadmap, in hopes of accelerating the migration to EMV contact and contactless chip technology in the United States.

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio