The nation’s largest banks are starting to compete for customers that want EMV chip-equipped credit cards. EMV chips are really a very small integrated circuit built into a credit card, and the technology was developed by a joint venture between Europay, Mastercard and Visa. Magnetic stripe cards are actually only used by those backwater, un-evolved hill-folk called Americans; much of the world has gotten on the EMV chip bandwagon. Article source – Banks fighting to corner market for EMV chip credit cards by MoneyBlogNewz.
Credit card difficulties
A common complaint among jet set types traveling overseas and using their credit cards is that European merchants often have difficulties processing American credit cards that have antiquated magnetic stripes rather than EMV chip cards more common overseas, according to Bloomberg. Both Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have decided to fix this issue. As a service, the high end charge cards can have EMV chips in them. Wells Fargo is launching a pilot program, where about 15,000 customers can be invited to use the Wells Fargo EMV chip card sometime this summer. Any high net worth clients in the Palladium program will be getting EMV cards from Chase bank who isn’t even piloting it.
How much is lost in sales without it
The need to have an EMV card, also commonly called a smart card, for travelers is not a joking matter. Magnetic strip cards aren’t accepted in several places in Europe. Because of this, in 2008 card providers lost $ 447 million in revenue while European merchants lost $ 4 billion. There’s a “Chip and PIN” used with the Smart Cards making them different than regular magnetic cards, Wikipedia explains. Chip and PIN cards use a small computer chip and built-in circuit board, about 3 by 5 millimeters in total, which stores the information of the user. A smart card reader is carried by merchants to read the card. A Personal Identification Number is given to users. This is how the sale is made. It is easier to keep money safe from thieves with a smart card. It is hard to manipulate.
Card companies already have them
The EMV chips were developed between Eurocard, MasterCard and Visa, calling it “EMV,” which is just one type of smart chip. American Express also has EMV chip equipped cards in its Express Pay line. However, the smartcard reader technology isn’t as widespread in America as in Europe, as the U.S. is slow to adopt technologies from other countries at times. All consumers will eventually have access to EMV chips at JPMorgan. The company is just giving them to high end customers before this.
Citations
Bloomberg
bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/jpmorgan-pushes-chip-cards-to-wealthy-in-race-with-wells-fargo.html
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV
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