Visa Europe introduces Technology Innovation Programme
for EMV chip-enabled merchants
PCI DSS compliance steps simplified for EMV chip-enabled
merchants
Programme is next step towards full EMV chip migration in
Europe
London, 9 February 2011 – Visa Europe today
announced a new Technology Innovation Programme which instantly
reduces EMV chip merchants’ PCI DSS compliance resource
requirements and provides a strong incentive for remaining magnetic
stripe-only merchants to migrate to EMV chip acceptance
technology.
Merchants who enrol in the programme,
effective from 30 April 2011, will be recognised as having full,
validated compliance if they have met milestones 1-2 of the Payment
Card Industry’s Prioritised Approach for PCI DSS, and be exempt
from penalties in the event of a data compromise if they have
completed milestones 1-4*.
The new initiative reflects the fraud
reduction benefits that EMV chip has brought to card payments in
Europe and is designed to provide tangible benefits to merchants
who invest in EMV chip-enabled payments technology at point-of-sale
(‘POS’). The fraud to sales ratio across Europe is now 0.049% (YE
September 2010) compared to 0.057% (YE September 2009), a 14%
year-on-year decrease.
The Technology Innovation programme is
available to any merchant who has previously validated PCI DSS
compliance, or provided a plan to come into compliance, and who has
not been involved in a recent material breach of cardholder
data.
Stanley Skoglund, Senior Vice
President, Payment System Security, at Visa Europe, says, "EMV chip
is a proven technology platform that has helped reduce fraud and
enables payment innovation. Visa is taking the lead in recognising
and rewarding the investment that many face-to-face merchants
throughout Europe have made in migrating to an EMV chip POS
acceptance environment.This new programme means that merchants can
meet their PCI DSS compliance requirements and reduce their overall
security costs.
"The programme further demonstrates
our strong commitment to achieving full EMV chip migration in
Europe as the technology provides the best platform for reducing
fraud, implementing SEPA and for introducing innovations such as
contactless and mobile payments."
Merchants can enrol in the Technology
Innovation Programme from 30 April 2011. Those who choose not to
enrol in the programme may seek to limit the availability of all
payment card data within their environment through other
complementary technologies such as data field encryption and/or
tokenisation.
You can now download the
Technology Innovation Programme Factsheet.
* Note to editors
The Technology Innovation Programme is
subject to certain criteria and can be invalidated in circumstances
where sensitive authentication data was stored; non-compliant
changes to an entity’s processing environment/policies after
validation; and where significant areas of non-compliance can be
established through a forensic investigation, including, but not
limited to, insufficient sampling of systems at the time of the PCI
DSS compliance assessment.
Please contact the press office for
further information, or for details on the milestone approach,
please download the
pdf.
About Visa Europe
In Europe, there are 419 million Visa
debit, credit and commercial cards. In the 12 months ending
September 2010 those cards were used to make purchases and cash
withdrawals to the value of €1.5 trillion. 12.5% of consumer
spending at point of sale in Europe is with a Visa card, and more
than 70% of that is on Visa debit cards.
Visa Europe is owned and operated by
more than 4,000 European member banks and was incorporated in July
2004. In October 2007, Visa Europe became independent of the new
global Visa Inc., with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual
licence in Europe. As a dedicated European payment system it is
able to respond quickly to the specific market needs of European
banks and their customers - cardholders and retailers - and to meet
the European Commission’s objective to create a true internal
market for payments.
Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance
around the world. In addition, Visa/PLUS is one of the world’s
largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency
in over 200 countries.
For more information, visit www.visaeurope.com.