ACI survey reveals slow adoption for EMV in North America
08 November, 2010
category: Contactless, Digital ID, Financial, NFC
In a recent survey conducted by ACI Worldwide, an international provider of payment systems, 76% of respondents do not currently issue payment cards with EMV technology, and of that group only 15% have plans to do so within the next 24 months.
However, 94% of respondents believe that EMV will reduce fraud on card-based transactions, and 82% believe that the fraud savings would cover the cost of the EMV implementation.
The survey was carried out at the BAI RDS event, and respondents were almost exclusively North American financial institutions.
Jim Schlegel, senior product manager at ACI Worldwide commented, “These results are almost difficult to believe – with so many respondents saying that EMV would reduce fraud enough to cover the costs of implementation, and yet so few with any active plans to start rolling it out. When we asked people what was the greatest barrier to EMV in the U.S., 46% said the cost to migrate and 33% said a lack of motivation – which just seems to almost contradict the views we saw elsewhere.”
He continued, “57% of respondents also admitted to having seen customer service issues with cardholders experiencing difficulties using their cards overseas, which is a significant number, and EMV alone can be a big help to overcoming these problems as it is the common standard in so many other countries that North American travelers visit frequently.”
The survey also looked at contactless technology, which showed low levels of current activity (17%) and most financial institutions (81%) not planning any contactless projects in the next 24 months, as well as mobile banking and payments. It was these two areas which had real levels of penetration (48% have a mobile banking program in place and 30% have mobile payments) and planned growth from those who are not currently embracing these tools (77% for mobile banking and 69% for mobile payments).
Schlegel concluded, “The popularity of mobile compared to EMV and contactless shows that banks are prepared to make investments, but newer card technologies aren’t seen as growth areas – as is evidenced by the percentage of respondents who do not intend to offer contactless cards in the next two years. When we asked if magnetic stripe card technology will be the dominant payment technology for the next five years, 48% said yes – which just goes to show how little change people are really expecting. I look forward to seeing how many of these predictions come true.”