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Of the five cards I carry in my wallet – one
credit, three debit and a prepaid card – not one
has been replaced with an EMV-compliant card,
even though two have been replaced over the
past year due to data breaches that may have
compromised the accounts. I know I'm not alone.
Still no panacea
EMV cards are considered more secure than traditional
mag stripe cards, but it's not a cure-all, said Daniel
Chatelain, founder and Managing Director of BayPay
Forum, an international association of payment
professionals. He said most EMV cards have mag
stripes in addition to chips and, as a result, can still be
cloned and used fraudulently, particularly in card-not-
present situations.
That's what happened after EMV took hold in Europe,
said Chatelain, a native of France. Some fraudsters
skimmed mag stripe data from cards used at ATMs;
others simply intercepted new EMV-compliant cards
and PIN notices that were being mailed to cardholders.
As long as credit and debit cards are manufactured with
mag stripes and POS terminals can read mag stripe
cards, they can be cloned and used to commit fraud,
Chatelain said.
Chatelain considers EMV more a "philosophical
argument" than a technology for securing card
payments. He believes it's not much more than a set of
rules, like the Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard, with consequences only when things go awry,
and in a public way. "The payments industry needs to
figure out a way to make card payments more secure
without putting onerous rules in place," Chatelain said.
One option – Chatelain's preference – would be
moving to dynamic mag stripe technology. It seems
that every mag stripe has embedded in it biometric-
like information that can be likened to fingerprints. It
comes from the manufacturing process and has to do
with the distribution of particles on the stripe. These
unique particle patterns can be identified with a high
degree of accuracy as a card is swiped through a reader,
industry experts have found. The same goes for swipes:
apparently, no two swipes of a mag stripe are precisely
the same, which means fraud could be easier to spot
if terminals were retrofitted to employ dynamic mag
stripe technology.
Just like EMV, dynamic mag stripe technology may
not be a panacea; but unlike chip and PIN security,
implementing it would be cheaper and easier for
everyone involved.
Patti Murphy is Senior Editor of The Green Sheet and President of
ProScribes Inc. She is also the founder of InsideMicrofinance.com.
Email her at patti@greensheet.com.
34
Of the five cards I carry in my wallet – one
credit, three debit and a prepaid card – not one
has been replaced with an EMV-compliant card,
even though two have been replaced over the
past year due to data breaches that may have
compromised the accounts. I know I'm not alone.
Still no panacea
EMV cards are considered more secure than traditional
mag stripe cards, but it's not a cure-all, said Daniel
Chatelain, founder and Managing Director of BayPay
Forum, an international association of payment
professionals. He said most EMV cards have mag
stripes in addition to chips and, as a result, can still be
cloned and used fraudulently, particularly in card-not-
present situations.
That's what happened after EMV took hold in Europe,
said Chatelain, a native of France. Some fraudsters
skimmed mag stripe data from cards used at ATMs;
others simply intercepted new EMV-compliant cards
and PIN notices that were being mailed to cardholders.
As long as credit and debit cards are manufactured with
mag stripes and POS terminals can read mag stripe
cards, they can be cloned and used to commit fraud,
Chatelain said.
Chatelain considers EMV more a "philosophical
argument" than a technology for securing card
payments. He believes it's not much more than a set of
rules, like the Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard, with consequences only when things go awry,
and in a public way. "The payments industry needs to
figure out a way to make card payments more secure
without putting onerous rules in place," Chatelain said.
One option – Chatelain's preference – would be
moving to dynamic mag stripe technology. It seems
that every mag stripe has embedded in it biometric-
like information that can be likened to fingerprints. It
comes from the manufacturing process and has to do
with the distribution of particles on the stripe. These
unique particle patterns can be identified with a high
degree of accuracy as a card is swiped through a reader,
industry experts have found. The same goes for swipes:
apparently, no two swipes of a mag stripe are precisely
the same, which means fraud could be easier to spot
if terminals were retrofitted to employ dynamic mag
stripe technology.
Just like EMV, dynamic mag stripe technology may
not be a panacea; but unlike chip and PIN security,
implementing it would be cheaper and easier for
everyone involved.
Patti Murphy is Senior Editor of The Green Sheet and President of
ProScribes Inc. She is also the founder of InsideMicrofinance.com.
Email her at patti@greensheet.com.
34
