EMV Chip Card Requirement 10/1/15 – Are you ready?

Decreasing Liability & Costs

Did you know that your practice has new potential risk for financial credit card fraud starting October 1st and that there is an easy, cost-saving solution?

According to a recent Wells Fargo survey reported in the August 7th UT Business section, the majority of small-business owners did not know about an October 1, 2015 deadline to get credit card readers and software to handle the new chip-embedded credit cards.  Failure to have the new technology can be a liability if a customer commits fraud with a chip card. This means that if a business does not use an EMV-compliant processing terminal and fraud occurs, then 100% of the liability falls upon the business owner – not the bank or the credit card processing company.

The U.S. credit card industry is switching to chip cards because it is more difficult for thieves to counterfeit them.  Chip cards have been used in Europe for over 10 years. Once Europe switched to the EMV platform, 80% of all fraud was eliminated. Credit card issuers are sending the new chip cards to their customers now.

When I learned about this change, we researched the situation and found the potential to avoid the risk plus substantially save on our credit card processing costs – an immediate 17% cost reduction for our office.  Once we realized the savings, we expanded the relationship and negotiated an agreement with Capital Bankcard that is now saving participating Physician Partners members up to 25%.  I understand that many practices are saving approximately $1,000/year/physician.

I’m pleased to see a regulation that helps avoid fraud, offers easy compliance, and, concurrently, with the contract we negotiated, helps our members save money!