With the EMV liability shift that takes effect in October 2015, how much you’ll be affected depends on how you process credit card payments.
For Card Present Transactions
If you use POS hardware or terminal that you need to swipe the credit card, then you’ll be facing the same EMV environment as retailers. October 1st is the start of the liability shift for fraudulent charges made with the card present transactions. The party who hasn’t made an investment in EMV security features will be liable.
For the card issuer, they need to invest in EMV security features, that’s why they came out with the chip cards, where all credit and debit cards have this security chips that are harder to counterfeit than magnetic strips.
For the merchant, they need to invest in EMV capable terminals or POS hardware that can take advantage of the card’s security chip.
If both parties have made the investment, then liability will be resolved in a similar manner to how it was before the shift. However, if only one party has adopted EMV technology, the party that didn’t make the investment will be held liable.
For Card Not Present Transaction (CNP)
If you process credit cards online, over the phone, or through an online payment gateway integrated, the new EMV standards won’t directly change the way you do business. You’ll still be processing EMV cards based on the customer’s credit card number.
Chances are Card-Not-Present transactions will experience an increase in fraud. Because of the EMV-technology in the Card Present Transaction, fraudster will likely turn their attention to the next target which is CNP,
but payment gateways and banks concerned about the vulnerabilities, will begin to adopt new standards to minimize their exposure.
If you’re processing CNP transactions stay up-to-date on the newest security developments, online security standards find more effective ways to navigate the new credit card security frontier.