Why You Should Be Using Your New EMV Chip Card in Arcadia
Written by
Tamila McDonald
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This content is brought to you by Foothill Credit Union. Foothill Credit Union is a local financial institution dedicated to improving its members’ financial well-being.
Many local financial institutions are starting to roll out new EMV chip cards if they haven’t already. So, now is the time to become aware of the features of these new cards. For example, Foothill Credit Union is rolling out their EMV enhanced cards in the Arcadia area. These enhanced cards are accepted everywhere and come at no extra cost to you.
Not only do they provide enhanced security over traditional strip cards, they also support mobile payment options. So, whether your shopping at the Westfield Santa Anita Shopping center or taking in a horse race at the Santa Anita Race Park, here’s why you should use your new EMV card’s chip capabilities over swiping whenever possible.
Read: 10 Best Credit Cards for Bad Credit
Tighter Security
Most of the rest of the industrialized world including Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada all use a chip and PIN or chip and signature system, which is what the EMV is. After the Target store data breach in 2013, EMV was thrown into the limelight as a way to minimize the value of data from these breaches and lessen a breaches’ impact.
“EMV Chips add additional security to credit cards by making the card more difficult to fraudulently reproduce,” said Melinda Dilwicius, marketing communications coordinator at Foothill Credit Union. “When a chip card transaction is processed the chip creates a unique code which is written onto the chip, which helps protect the card from counterfeiters.”
Traditional cards store the cardholder’s data in the stripe of the card. However, that information can be easily copied, stored and used fraudulently. The new EMV cards, however, offer a much better range of security features to defeat these fraud attempts. The card includes a microprocessor chip that stores the data of the cardholder with included cryptography to secure the data. Even if a major data breach were to happen at a retail outlet, most of the data retrieved through these new cards is encrypted and therefore generally unusable to criminal organizations. In fact, most countries that have implemented chip and PIN technology have seen a major decrease in fraudulent transactions.
Convenience of Choice
In the U.S., Visa and MasterCard are leaving the specific implementation of the new protocols to individual financial institutions, but required retailers to move to this new protocol by October 2015. After that date, card-issuers assume much more risk from fraudulent activity by not issuing chip cards.
Financial institutions offer two EMV security systems: chip and PIN or chip and signature. Although the chip and signature option only requires a signature with the chip’s use, both card types include the EMV microprocessor chip. The other just includes the added security of a PIN required for every transaction.
There is a trade-off between transaction times with either system: Signature systems offer a faster transaction time over PIN systems, but PIN systems offer a little more security.
Added Benefits
Another benefit of the new EMV cards include being able to use your new card in more locations when abroad. If you are visiting other countries and do not have an EMV card, your payment might not be accepted. With the launch of services like ApplePay and PayPal’s mobile payment options, these new cards offer even greater payment flexibility for retailers and consumers.
If you haven’t already, be sure to get a new chip card as soon as possible. EMV cards help stop fraudulent activity and will give you peace of mind with their added security.
