What is EMV?

EMV® — Europay, Mastercard, Visa — is a global standard for credit cards that uses computer chips to authenticate (and secure) chip-card transactions using tokenization. EMV is designed to reduce counterfeit fraud. Tokenization is the process of protecting sensitive data by replacing it with a unique data packet. This makes it so if any data is stolen - it is useless, it devalues any data stolen from a payment system.

3 Levels to EMV Compliance

• Level 1: (Hardware Compliance) - Focuses on ensuring the hardware manufacturers physical hardware meets the requirements to accept and process EMV transactions
• Level 2: (Software) - Ensures the software or firmware on the hardware is certified to accept and process EMV transactions.
• Level 3:(Brand Certification) - Certifies all devices and software in the EMV payment transaction with major oil brands or networks to ensure end-to-end transaction acceptance.

Why Upgrade?

Effective April 1, 2021, fraud liability shifts to the party in the payment chain with the least secure technology. If your site is upgraded to accept EMV transactions, you are insured against chargeback fees. As more sites upgrade to EMV, fraud will seek non-EMV enabled sites.