EMV Liability Shift Update – What Liability Actually Shifts? (Video Content)

With the October 1, 2015 liability shift deadline looming, merchants who have not yet made the change continue to evaluate the cost of accepting EMV cards versus the liability that will shift from the issuer to the merchant if they do not. The costs of implementation are fairly straightforward—buy EMV-enabled terminals and work with the terminal vendor, payment application vendor, and processor to implement and certify. It has been much more difficult to determine the type and amount of liability that will shift. First, if you read the card network operating regulations, EMV FAQs, or attend payment industry events, you can come away with two competing answers on what liability shifts—either all counterfeit fraud liability (regardless of card type) will shift or only fraud that occurs when the magnetic stripe data of an EMV card is used to make a counterfeit card. Second, pre-shift, there is no source of data accessible to a merchant to determine the dollar amount of