Don’t Expect Another EMV Extension

December 04, 2019

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—For fuel retailers, the deadline for readying automated fuel dispensers (AFDs) to be EMV-payment compliant is less than a year away, and Conexxus research shows that many businesses lag behind in making the move. Although the major credit card companies pushed back an initial 2017 deadline to October 2020, the Merchant Advisory Group (MAG) warns retailers that another extension isn’t in the works.

The movement to Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV)—a chip-based payment system developed to make credit and debit card transactions more secure—has helped reduce payment fraud across the brick and mortar retail verticals. While the rest of the retail industry has migrated to chip payments technology at the point of sale, retail fuel is still working toward EMV acceptance outdoors at the AFD.

Starting next October, losses due to counterfeit fraud transactions at the AFD that are currently being absorbed by financial institutions will be charged back to merchants that have not implemented chip technology at the AFD. The global networks previously acknowledged that the AFD market required more time, providing AFDs a three-year delay from the original liability shift activation date of October 2017, which was two years after the rest of the retail community was subject to the same chip liability shift.

MAG formally requested another delay of two years in light of significant challenges that still remain…