MasterCard, Visa Team Up on EMV Chip Technology

The partnership is designed to speed the introduction of EMV cards in the U.S. market.

MasterCard and Visa today announced a licensing of their respective chip technologies in an effort to streamline and speed up the process of EMV adoption in the U.S.

The card schemes said they have "have made certain proprietary EMV chip technologies available to each other and other networks, enabling a debit chip transaction originating from a single chip application to be routed by the merchant to Visa, MasterCard or any other U.S. PIN debit network that elects to participate in these same solutions," in a statement.

EMV, the global technology 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, in contrast to the magnetic strip cards now used mostly in the U.S.

According to the two companies, issuers will be able to load their global brand’s application onto their cards – either Visa or MasterCard – and enable transactions to route over any participating PIN debit network within the U.S. MasterCard, Visa and American Express have all announced roadmaps to EMV adoption in the U.S. previously.

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