The Food Marketing Institute (FMI), representing thousands of retail food stores and pharmacies, has asked Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Financial Services to delay the rollout of EMV chip-bearing payment cards and the plan, effective October 2015, that will hold noncompliant merchants responsible for fraudulent transactions if they haven’t installed the required hardware and software. The FMI is asking to postpone the deadline to 2016.
In the letter, FMI’s president and chief executive Leslie Sarasin writes, “Regardless of how strong the commitment or how many dollars invested, the reality is that the system will not be ready to meet the card networks’ arbitrarily set mandate for the liability shift in October 2015.”
Representatives for MasterCard and American Express told The Wall Street Journal they do not intend to change the existing deadline.
The National Association of Federal Credit Unions sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi criticizing the FMI request and asking that U.S. legislators support “strong data safekeeping standards” for merchants. |