Target Partners With MasterCard on EMV

Target today announced a partnership with MasterCard as it seeks to migrate its store-branded cards to EMV in the wake of its highly publicized data breach last December.

The big box chain said it plans to incorporate MasterCard chip-and-PIN technology across its REDcard portfolio. Beginning in early 2015, the entire REDcard portfolio, including all Target-branded credit and debit cards, will be enabled with MasterCard’s chip-and-PIN solution, the company said. Existing co-branded cards will be reissued as MasterCard co-branded chip-and-PIN cards and, ultimately, through this initiative, all of Target’s REDcard products will be chip-and-PIN secured.

After the breach, Target chairman Gregg Steinhafel said moving to EMV, the global standard for payment cards, was a priority for the company. Target said the payments terminals at all its nearly 1,800 stores will be equipped to process chip-and-PIN cards by this September.

Also as part of Target's information technology overhaul since the data breach, it announced the hiring of a new CIO, Bob DeRhodes. DeRhodes has held top technology positions in the financial services industry at Citi and USAA, as well as serving as the senior information technology advisor for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Establishing a clear path forward for Target following the data breach has been my top priority," Steinhafel said in a statement. "I believe Target has a tremendous opportunity to take the lessons learned from this incident and enhance our overall approach to data security and information technology."

[For More on the Target data breach, click here]

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