MasterCard Announces Roadmap to EMV for U.S. ATM's

The march to EMV adoption continues as Purchase-N.Y. based MasterCard announced that in Oct. 2016 it will start shifting fraud liability for ATM transactions in the U.S. The liability shift is an extension of the roadmap towards EMV adoption that MasterCard introduced last January, and will apply to all transactions with MasterCard branded products in the U.S.

EMV-enabled cards are acknowledged to be more secure and fraud-proof than the magnetic stripe technology used by most credit cards in the U.S. Card companies, including MasterCard, have started announcing that they will not be held liable for fraud associated charges after a certain date for magnetic stripe cards in a move to push merchants, issuers and acquirers to introduce necessary hardware and software upgrades to enable acceptance of EMV's. This announcement is intended to push for the similar upgrades to enable EMV at ATM's that accept MasterCard branded products.

"As other markets have migrated to EMV, we have seen fraud shift to the least secure," said Mike Weitzman, Group Executive, U.S. Markets, for MasterCard, in a statement. "By making this announcement today we're providing our issuers, acquirers and ISO's flexibility and sufficient time to manage their ATM technology decisions."

[See Related: Will EMV Prevent ATM Fraud?]

MasterCard cited research by the Aite Group, a consulting firm, that pegged fraud costs in the U.S. card payments industry at an estimated $8.6 billion per year.

"The industry executives we talk to are bullish on EMV migration to reduce their potential vulnerability from mag stripe fraud," added the Aite Group's research director Julie Conroy McNelley.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio