Aite: 60% of U.S. POS Locations to Be EMV-Compliant by Year-End (Feb. 12, 2015)
About 60 percent of U.S. POS locations will accept EMV chip transactions by yearend, according to a recent Aite Group survey. The results suggest the push to upgrade terminals in advance of the October 2015 liability shift is “accelerating,” but serious gaps in awareness and planning still exist, especially among small and midsize merchants.
The majority of large merchants have begun or completed their terminal upgrades, and merchants, as a whole, are aware of the EMV shift, Aite reported. Eighty-six percent of all merchants responding to the telephone survey said they expect to be chip-enabled by the end of 2015. Payment terminal makers confirm that nearly all hardware shipped this year incorporates NFC, helping drive mobile payments adoption.
But Aite’s survey data suggest about a third of small to midsize merchants are still unaware of the U.S. EMV migration announced in 2012. “A large percentage of small to midsize U.S. merchants are either undecided or not planning to upgrade their POS infrastructure in the near future,” the report’s authors said. What’s more, only one in five smaller merchants are aware their terminals are NFC-capable, Aite said. “There’s a clear and urgent need for aggressive and ongoing education among the small-business community,” the report concluded.
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