Many banks are now issuing customers more secure chip-based credit cards, and most retailers now have card terminals in their checkout lanes that can handle the “dip” of chip-card transactions (as opposed to the usual swipe of the card’s magnetic stripe). But comparatively few retailers actually allow chip transactions, most are still asking customers to swipe the stripe instead of dip the chip.
Visa CEO, Charles W. Scharf, said in an earnings call late last month that more than 750,000 locations, representing 17 percent of the U.S., face-to-face card-accepting merchant base are now enabled to handle chip-based transactions, also known as the EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) payment standard. Viewed another way, that means U.S. consumers currently can expect to find chip cards accepted in checkout lines at fewer than one in five brick-and-mortar merchants.
