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Agents & Brokers, Employment Practices, Management Liability
Ready for the 10/1 EMV Liability Shift?
If your business accepts credit cards, you have probably heard of the “EMV Liability Shift.” That’s what will happen on October 1, 2015, when certain liabilities for credit card fraud will shift from the issuer bank to your business.
If you haven’t heard of this change, take a look at your credit cards. Newly issued cards have a square computer chip embedded in them called an EMV Chip. EMV stands for “Europay,
MasterCard and Visa.” After October 1, merchants will be required to use a new kind of scanner to get the data off of that chip in order to complete an in-person credit card transaction.
So to be truly ready for October, merchants need to have both installed equipment and trained their employees to use it. The installation must be done properly, the equipment must be reliable, and the training must be effective.
There are some exceptions – for example, the old cards without chips will still be processed the old way – but if a card has an EMV Chip and the transaction goes through without using it, then the merchant may be liable for chargebacks if the transaction results in fraud.
There are many resources which provide details about this change. Visa’s Readiness Guide, for example, can be found at this link:
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-merchant-chip-acceptance-readiness-guide.pdf
So, EMV liability risks will soon shift to your business. What about insurance? A well-designed insurance program will specifically address data breach scenarios and will include Crime Insurance and Cyber Liability Insurance coverages tailored protect your business.
Now is the time to discuss data breach issues with your insurance broker. October 1 is right around the corner.
