The US is the last major economy to fully embrace EMV and with card fraud now at an all-time high of $8.5 billion, it is under increasing pressure to do so.

A report by Worldnet, Driving EMV migration in the USA, takes a look at the US's journey towards EMV adoption six months into the 'shift in responsibility' for revenue losses from chargebacks in October 2015, with the bulk of work still ahead. The survey is based on responses from more than 1,000 US payments industry professionals and conversations with 15 issuers, acquirers, processors and payment intermediaries. The US is the last major economy to fully embrace EMV, seeing as Europe, Canada and Australia have already done so.

The main goal of introducing EMV capabilities is to reduce fraud and increase payments efficiency. Card fraud – including card-not-present crimes, stolen or lost cards and card counterfeit – has been growing steadily in the US in the past three years, a trajectory that is not expected to slow any time soon, as shown in the graph below.

The survey highlighted that:

• in 2015, card fraud in the USA hit an all-time high of $8.5 billion;
• following the introduction of EMV cards in Canada, POS fraud reduced by 88 per cent over three years;
• 80 per cent of respondents to the survey believed that the introduction of EMV would also speed up adoption of contactless payments by merchants;
• over 90 per cent of survey respondents agreed that combating fraud was the primary incentive for EMV implementation;
• among survey respondents the perceived complexity of the certification process (75 per cent), the need for merchant education and training (60 per cent), and making the business case for EMV to merchants (64 per cent) were cited as major obstacles to EMV migration.

It also underlined the following data:

• In 2012, the UN Federal Credit Union issued the first chip card
• 40 per cent of US consumers have EMV cards
• 25 per cent of merchants are EMV ready
• 400 million chip cards have been issued in the US

The survey found that good progress has so far been made towards EMV in the US. Close to one million retail locations are now EMV ready, a figure growing at 4 to 5 per cent a month.