By now, your bank must have impressed upon you the need to change your older credit and debit card. The reason being the older magnetic stripe technology has been phased out and the new chip technology is the new trend. From now on, there should be no more swiping of cards but instead, there will be the inserting of a card into a device, almost the same way as you would in an ATM machine. Apart from the changes in the way these new cards will be physically used, there are several other changes that users need to be aware of in order to take full advantage of the new technology. Below are some of the more important features and new consumer behaviour that you should engage in or understand to fully utilize the new chip technology used in credit cards.
As mentioned earlier, by now, most certified payment processing companies have already switched over to the new chip technology that is used in cards. The few processing companies that have clients that have not fully made the switch are doing so but leaving all the risk that could be involved in using the old technology to the clients that have not yet switched to the newer chips. What this simply means is that, if you have not yet switched from the magnetic stripe cards, then you will be liable to incur the cost of any losses due to fraud that may happen on your card. For those who have switched to the new cards, what are the new habits that you are bound to notice. Well, first of all you will notice that when you purchase any goods using the new chip cards, you will have to insert the card into a device that will most likely resemble a point of sale device. The user of the card will then have to insert their PIN for the card to be used or for the payment to be effected. The card will then have to be removed from the device for use later on.
Furthermore, the new chip cards, which are now commonly called the EMV cards after the popular Europay, MasterCard and Visa, which have been the main global standards for a long time, now have more prompts that may not always be standard from card to card or from device to device. This means that the buyer and the seller both have to be keen about the prompts requested on the point of sale device so that following the whole transaction through the whole payment cycle is done appropriately. This simple improvement, albeit a little bit more involving, will ensure that high risk merchant accounts are a little bit safer to use than with the previous magnetic strip cards. With that being said, devices or procedures that involve as few prompts, as is safely possible, will be beneficial so as to allow a faster payment cycle as well as less inconvenience to the end user.
