Visa Canada's Migration to Chip Cards: Upcoming Milestone

TORONTO, Sept. 10 /CNW/ - With Canada's migration to EMV chip card technology successfully underway, Visa cardholders are currently experiencing the benefits of Chip & PIN (personal identification number) innovation. Chip cards contain embedded microchips and use dynamic data to provide greater security to credit card transactions, making an already safe payments system even more secure.

Along with celebrating the deployment of Chip cards across the country, Visa Canada reminds merchants about an important Chip migration milestone. As of October 1, 2010, the liability for card-present fraudulent transactions involving a Chip card, such as counterfeit or card-not-received fraud, will shift to merchants who have not implemented Chip-compliant technology. The many merchants who already have Chip-compliant technology in their locations will be unaffected by this shifting of fraud liability.

A part of Visa's ongoing commitment to providing secure payment products and services, Canada's migration to Chip card technology is an important step in protecting their business and their customers from fraud related liability. Chip technology enables cardholders to enjoy the convenience of secure Visa payments at their favourite retailers, and merchants to enjoy the peace of mind in knowing that they're helping to protect themselves and their customers from fraud. Businesses that accept Chip cards have benefited from enhanced security and convenience at the point-of-sale, helping to improve efficiencies and reduce the frequency of chargebacks due to fraud.

"Visa Canada has always made security a top priority, in fact we were the first to announce our intention to bring Chip to market in 2003," said Mike Bradley, Head of Products at Visa Canada. "With benefits to all participants in the payment process, Chip has fast become Canada's way to pay at the point-of-sale."

Building on top of Chip & PIN technology is the Visa payWave contactless payment platform. Reinforcing Visa's leadership and commitment to security and innovation, Visa payWave enables customers to simply wave their Chip card in front of a secure contactless reader at checkout, making it a fast and convenient way to pay and be paid. Using their Visa payWave-enabled cards, Visa cardholders can shop at some of Canada's most popular merchants, SUBWAY(R), Second Cup, Country Style and Coffee Time.

As always, magnetic stripe cards will continue to provide Visa cardholders with a trusted method of payment. Cardholders should have confidence in the security of magnetic stripe cards and their ability to use them at Canadian merchants. Visa chip cards will continue to have a magnetic stripe to ensure that cards can be used globally and there will continue to be fraud prevention measures on all cards and on the Visa network to safeguard consumers and merchants. Merchants will experience no change when accepting magnetic stripe cards.

To find out more about the benefits of Chip and the potential liability risk of not accepting Chip technology, Visa encourages merchants to speak with their acquirer or payment processor or visit Visa.ca/Merchant.

About Visa

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable digital currency. Underpinning digital currency is one of the world's most advanced processing networks - VisaNet - that is capable of handling more than 10,000 transactions a second, with fraud protection for consumers and guaranteed payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com.

For further information: Teri Broughton, Visa Canada, 416-860-8869, [email protected]