Visa has annouced an expansion of its previously announced roadmap for EMV chip card adoption in the United States to include a migration path for ATM transactions.
Visa plans to provide some of its proprietary EMV chip technology to the industry, free of charge, in order to drive chip adoption and issuer compliance with US debit regulations.
Visa hope this approach will simplify EMV chip implementation for debit, reduce migration costs and increase flexibility for card issuers, acquirer processors and merchants.
Visa's EMV chip technology will be made available in conjunction with a generic, unbranded Application Identifier (AID).
Merchants can continue to route debit transactions to their network of choice, just as they can with magnetic stripe transactions. Issuers will continue to have the flexibility to change debit networks without having to re-issue cards. In addition, this approach will enable debit networks that do not have their own EMV chip solutions to support debit chip card transactions. All transactions can be routed to the appropriate network using the same methodology used in the magnetic stripe environment. Visa will also make its technology and generic US debit AID available to support ATM transactions.
Visa also established a timeline to encourage acquirers to upgrade ATMs in Asia Pacific and the US to accept EMV chip cards. Visa will assign liability for counterfeit fraud ATM transactions to the party - acquirer or issuer - that has not adopted EMV chip technology. If an EMV chip card is used at an ATM that cannot accept EMV chip-enabled cards, the ATM acquirer will bear the cost for counterfeit fraud. Currently card issuers bear the liability for fraudulent ATM transactions.
Visa has established the following timelines for ATM transactions, across all Visa and/or Plus branded products:
- Effective April 1, 2015 - US third-party ATM acquirer processors and sub-processors must be able to support EMV chip data
- Effective October 1, 2015 - Liability will shift in Asia Pacific, excluding China, India, Japan, and Thailand
- Effective October 1, 2017 - Liability will shift in China[1], India, Japan, Thailand, and the US
Additionally, from April 1, 2013, a liability shift will apply to all qualifying transactions taking place in Australia and New Zealand. With liability shifts already in effect in Europe; Canada; Latin America and the Caribbean; and Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa; by 2017 Visa issuers and acquirers will be able to rely on a single global liability policy that encourages chip-on-chip (EMV chip card read by an EMV chip card reader) transactions at both the point-of-sale and ATMs.