By April 2013, in the US, financial services companies Visa and MasterCard plan to distribute credit and debit cards with EMV chips for cash withdrawals and cashless payments in stores – at the moment, most cards in the US only have magnetic strips, which can easily be copied. The EMV standard developed by Europay, MasterCard and Visa is more effective at protecting against duplication, since criminals can currently only use their skimming hardware on cashpoints to pick up magnetic strips and PINs.

The credit card companies in the US hope that adopting EMV chips will help stem the growing tide of skimming incidents, which has been costing them a significant amount of money. In Germany, the nationwide adoption of EMV chips by 2011 has already had clear effects – according to credit specialists EURO Kartensysteme, in 2011 there were around 45% fewer card data thefts from manipulated cashpoints than in 2010.

The delayed adoption of EMV chips in the US is seen as an advantage by those in the credit business, since they can learn from the experiences in Europe and reduce costs as they change systems.

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