EMV to Prove a Major Change For US Payment Systems

It's easy to look at the field of mobile payments and the overall checkout experience these days with a bit of trepidation. After what happened back around holiday time with Target (News - Alert) and Neiman Marcus, it's easy to get concerned. But there's a growing movement called Experian, Mastercard and Visa (EMV), that's bringing out a new standard that may help make our credit and debit card experiences—not to mention our mobile payments—a lot more secure overall. Meanwhile, Gemalto (News - Alert) and VeriFone are already starting to project how EMV will change the lives of shoppers everywhere, and the end result should be a happy one indeed.

To that end, Gemalto and VeriFone are set to hit the CARTES America Conference, set to run this Tuesday, May 13, at the Mirage in Las Vegas. While there, both Gemalto's North America vice president of marketing Philippe Benitez and VeriFone's vice president of product marketing Erik Vlugt will offer up a presentation covering several facets of the landscape with EMV.  On tap for the conference includes a discussion of best practices involved in bringing EMV to current operations, as well as lessons that the two companies previously learned from bringing out the new system, which likely had some connection to the development of the best practices set.

Beyond that, the duo will also be discussing means to augment marketing and raise awareness of the EMV protocols in the United States market, with a  particular focus on things like consumer education and acquisition, as well as getting in the right hardware to handle the job and offering users a better ability to customize cards. Since Gemalto has previously deployed 80 separate EMV contactless programs worldwide, and also handles the security software for over a billion EMV cards, the company is clearly in an excellent position to talk about its experiences with EMV.

There's quite a bit at stake involving the use of EMV as well; EMV requires the use of smart chip technology as a means to secure cards right at the point of sale, meaning better protection for both businesses and users. Better yet, when it comes to United States users, the use of EMV on a wide scale allows a better interoperability with systems outside the United States, meaning that credit cards and the like will work in much the same way regardless of where the user goes, making travel abroad a real and present possibility.

The use of EMV is likely to offer some substantial improvements in terms of the mobile payment concept, as well as similar mobile payment mechanisms like debit and credit cards. The interoperability of same is likely to prove a draw for those of a traveler's bent, though getting EMV fully operational in the United States may prove a tall order. Yes, there are some recent hackings to point to and draw on the inherent desire of folks to protect a credit rating, but by like token, there's also a certain amount of “If it ain't broke, don't fix it” to overcome. Many will likely look at current cards and mobile payment systems and note there's been no trouble there, so significant education efforts will be needed to overcome that somewhat grounded entropy.

Still, conferences like this should go a long way toward changing some minds, and making the case for EMV as a means to not only make mobile payment mechanisms safer, but also more effective in the long run.