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Survey shows only about one-third of Americans have received chip-enabled credit cards
In a recent report on its Marketplace program, NPR addressed the reasons why neither credit card issuers nor retailers are likely to meet the October 2015 deadline for widespread U.S. adoption of new, more secure EMV credit cards.
Card issuers have made a commitment to replace as many magnetic stripe cards as possible with the new chip cards. However, according to a survey released last week by CreditCards.com, as of February 2015, only three in ten American credit-card-holders had a chip card. Marketplace spoke with an industry analyst who is skeptical that card issuers will meet their own self-imposed deadline of October 2015. The new cards cost credit card issuers about four times as much as the traditional mag stripe card – approximately $1 per card, compared to 25 cents.
Retailers are not much better off in their preparations, with estimates that approximately 25% of U.S. retailers, at most, have already deployed chip-card readers. Deployment is higher at major retailers such as Target and Walmart. Marketplace interviewed the National Retail Federation’s Mallory Duncan, who estimates that the cost of updating point-of-sale terminals for retailers may be as high as $25 to $30 billion.
