EMV adoption gets global

This week as the whole secure transactions industry is gathering in Cannes, France, for Trustech event, several good news about the adoption of digital trust technologies are coming from different locations.

In India, the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s Central Bank, has mandated that magstripe cards will be removed by end of December 2018. Already since September 2015, all Indian payment card issuers had to issue EMV cards. Now, from January 2019, only EMV Chip and PIN cards will be valid for transactions. This resolution covers credit and debit cards, and domestic and international payment cards. It has meant converting all POS terminals, all ATMs, and for all stakeholders going through EMV certification. However, India is also well engaged on the path to mobile payments with heavyweights such as PayTM, MobiKwik or ICICI Pockets.

Bangladesh is following the movement to raise security for the whole payment infrastructure, as Bangladesh Bank, the country’s Central Bank, has ruled that Bangladeshi banks will no longer issue magstripe cards after February 28, 2019. The conversion of ATMs and POS terminals is also launched.

In the US, with more than 360 million credit cards and billions of debit cards, the EMV migration is still ongoing as not all payment terminals are yet ready to accept smart cards. Also, some card issuers still prefer the bear the risk associated to the liability shift mandated by payment schemes than to issue smart cards to all their cardholders. The US is a test bench for payment systems variety and the emergence of numerous FinTech. In addition to bank-issued debit and credit cards, 3 out of 4 Americans use PayPal, and a significant number of households use store credit cards, limited line credit cards for online shopping , store debit cards, business prepaid cards and digital or virtual currency accounts, according to a research by TSYS.

EMV cards still represent a significant part of our industry as demonstrates the card production and personalization equipment vendors present at Trustech. The industry is also focusing on new, dematerialized, mobile payment means, that are at the core of the Trustech conference.