Yep, still here. And yeah, it's been almost a year since I last updated. There really hasn't been much on the EMV front to update about, which is probably a good thing. Cards mainly just work. Granted, the US implementation is still not anywhere close to ideal (IMO, anyway), but I've come to terms with that.
A lot of the reason why I'm okay with it now is because contactless (which is what the rest of the world's been moving towards for a while now) is finally starting to get some use. It sounds weird celebrating "only" 28% of card present transactions using it, but then again, just a few years ago it really did seem like the US was simply never going to use it. And that was a pretty reasonable assumption, too. After all, we already tried it in the late 2000s--only for it to flop (at best) and downright contribute to cardholder reluctance to this day (at worst). It's easy to see an alternate timeline where the US just did QR instead (e.g. what China does) or even simply just continued inserting indefinitely. At least until everyone simply moved over to ordering everything online or something, anyway.
Anyway, I haven't had to mass add any stores in quite a while simply due to the high penetration of EMV at this point, so no list unlike with previous posts. I can say that Ralphs finally got contactless, though, so it's very possible the rest of Kroger will get the "contactless support" flag flipped in the near future. That pretty much just leaves Home Depot, Lowe's and Walmart, really, before one could make the argument that support is basically "universal"*.
* Given the continued prevalence of cashiers/servers running people's cards for them, I doubt the US will ever reach 100% merchant acceptance. But if it gets prevalent enough that those places just tap cards instead of inserting them, that's probably "good enough" for the card networks. Good luck to those who only have their phones on them (though I guess some QR web portal based system will end up becoming the de facto standard for those).
So yeah, we went a long time without an update again. However, this one is important.
It turns out we have a hard end of life for this website now: 2029. That's the date when Mastercards are no longer allowed to have a magnetic stripe at all. Not just "no longer required to", period (with minimal exceptions). Because of this, stores will increasingly begin having problems running cards in the several years prior to the cutoff, forcing whoever is still not EMV enabled by then to do whatever's necessary to make that happen.
However, that brings up the question of who exactly will be left by that point. I'm honestly not sure it'll be all that many places. As it is now, almost 80% of card present transactions are EMV. In my personal life, even, I go quite a long while before one of my cards gets swiped--even at gas pumps. These days, I can also go multiple days without needing to insert as contactless adoption at the merchant level is significantly improved even compared to a couple of years ago. (I'm a bit annoyed that we needed a pandemic and the subsequent loss of lives for that to happen, but that's a different subject.) Come to think of it, many of whoever's left may very well switch over even before 2027 simply to get contactless support the way user adoption's going.
What about the various aspects of a store's setup? This too is becoming less important over time. Quick Chip is pretty much a standard terminal feature in the US now, for one thing. (I recently got a Treecard debit card--which has offline PIN--but have had quite a hard time getting that PIN reset precisely due to QC. Plus, the two places I've found that still don't have it also don't seem to run issuer scripts, which makes me think that those either aren't sent over to cards anymore or Treecard made a mistake configuring the cards. I'm not fully sure on this yet.) Combined with restaurants as a group having decided not to do pay at the table and even many of the few PIN preferring cards switching over to signature preference, the important bits are now basically a) is EMV working at all and b) is contactless working.
So, will the website shut down? Probably not immediately. However, updates like this one will probably become less and less frequent over time, and I may eventually just make the website read-only. In the meantime, definitely continue to submit additions and suggestions for updates.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Sorry for the lack of an update in a while. Except for the gas pump EMV liability shift this past April, not much has really happened. Life is now finally getting to the point where it might be possible to check out local places again. On the other hand, though, EMV penetration is already pretty good; I'm not sure there's going to be many more stores to add, so it may be time to think of life beyond this site. Contactless still has a bit of life left, though (which is why there's the sister site)--plus there are still a few years where there should be activity on the gas pump side. We'll see in any case.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Let's just hope for a better 2021. Enough said.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Still here. The pandemic is still raging, unfortunately, despite efforts to try to pretend like nothing's wrong (which is a topic for another site). One of the few upsides is that people are actually realizing that contactless exists; usage has gone up dramatically since the beginning of the year. I just wish we didn't need hundreds of thousands of people dying to push us to it. After all, other countries were able to find reasons to adopt it that didn't involve mass death and possible long-term health issues.
As for the site itself, I fixed a display bug in the Recent Businesses list that occurred as a result of the use of the same code for both EMV Accepted Here and Contactless Accepted Here. (You may have noticed the former showing locations that are decidedly not gas stations showing up as "Yes" for that column when searching by name.) I also mass added all of the locations that were queued up over the last four months; while there wasn't much movement in terms of EMV enablement, there were at least several places that seemingly enabled contactless only because of the pandemic.
(BTW, Kroger--one of the biggest remaining holdouts--looks to actually be giving in. Currently only at QFC, but will likely be at their other brands as well once the bugs are worked out.)
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
* Likely has had EMV for a while; only recently confirmed.
Sorry for the significant delay in posting. I'm sure most have heard about the novel new virus by now and the havoc it's wreaking on the world. Unfortunately this also means that mass updates will slow down significantly due to widespread store closures. I've gone through the majority of the updates that were in my queue (which will be listed below as usual).
On the upside, at least contactless usage is growing a lot faster now? Wish we didn't need a pandemic for that, though.
Anyway, please stay safe. And stay home as much as possible.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Happy Holidays everyone! There haven't been many updates on the EMV front over the last few weeks, especially since stores tend not to update anything over this time period. However, there are still retailers gaining both chip and contactless, as well as new contactless cards coming to market. Visa in fact claimed that the goal of 100 million contactless cards for 2019 has been met and that an additional 200 million will be rolled out next year. In addition, tap to pay on the NYC subway continues to exceed expectations. It should be interesting to see the stats for overall contactless use next year to see the magnitude of the improvement.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
* Has supported EMV for a while, only recently been able to add all remaining locations.
Today I created a sister site called contactlessacceptedhere.com. They both use the same underlying software, but the main difference is that contactlessacceptedhere.com behaves as though you checked the "show contactless" option and does not show non-contactless supporting businesses. In addition, it will allow you to add contactless supporting businesses that do not support the chip (though I expect the number that fall in that category is pretty small at this point).
Please let me know if there are any issues. I did do some initial checks and everything looked okay, but it's always possible something slipped through the cracks.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
It looks like momentum on the EMV side is slowing down significantly; compared to three months ago, the list below is a lot shorter. I'm not sure how much more we can expect from anyything remotely close to being a major retailer at this point. There might be a bit of momentum once fuel pumps start getting enablement, but we're only a year away from the 2020 deadline and many still don't have it enabled or in some cases, even the hardware. We'll see what happens with those.
However, contactless momentum is getting stronger; the vast majority of the below list got contactless immediately along with EMV, plus TJMaxx and Bath & Body Works. Citi also recently added contactless to most of their credit cards, joining Bank of America (in pilot areas), Chase, Capital One, American Express and BB&T. It'll be interesting to see these cause any increase in contactless usage (last I heard, use in the US was less than 1%--but this was before the recent major rollouts).
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Sorry for the lengthy wait since the last update. My previous post was just before the holidays; traditionally there isn't much done to retailer POS systems during that time and for a period afterward. Plus, things have been pretty busy in my real life overall. (BTW, a lot of the newly added listings mentioned below likely have had EMV for a while, just unable to be confirmed until recently.)
That said, since it has been a while, there have been a few significant developments with regard to contactless. First, Target did roll it out after all, and it seems to work as expected. No common AID support on debit yet, so no PIN prompts; we'll see how long that lasts. Safeway, on the other hand, broke contactless on anything other than Visa for a while--but AFAIK that should be fixed now.
Chase is also rolling out contactless cards again after having discontinued them. In fact, it looks like Visa is actually getting serious about pushing them given the heavy advertising by both companies. Supposedly 100 million Visa cards will have it by the end of the year; we'll see if a) that ends up being true and b) if that translates to significant use by customers.
Finally, the number of locations supporting contactless has broken through the 70% barrier (number of unique merchants is also extremely close at 69.9% as of this writing). It's honestly more than I expected considering how accepted cashiers running cards for customers still is in the US and if significant use does materialize, it may spur the remainder to enable the functionality and/or adjust terminal placement. Even if terminal placement isn't adjusted, however, cashiers may very well just tap cards for customers--which will achieve the same result for the card networks.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Today I added two new map filtering options. The first one, when checked, will only show merchants that support contactless payment (e.g. Apple/Google Pay). The second will hide merchants that use Quick Chip. The latter is extremely important because QC support has been increasing as of late and because it has significant impacts on those using cards that rely on issuer scripts to perform PIN changes (QC results in issuer scripts not being run).
Speaking of Quick Chip, Target is currently rolling out a software update that enables it. If a place like Target decided it was a good idea, what's to stop, say, Walmart or any other retailer from doing it? I suspect non-QC retailers will eventually become less common than QC-using ones, especially as customers begin to expect it.
BTW, I also heard rumors that Target is finally going to enable contactless some time during the holidays. I'll be sure to update the map once the rollout's confirmed.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
In major news, several large holdouts finally enabled contactless recently: 7-Eleven, CVS and Costco. I didn't have much doubt about Costco (as they had been installing outdoor readers on gas pumps for a while, not to mention the Citi credit card), but the others were more questionable. CVS in particular was trying its hand at an app just like Walmart and Target.
Anyway, after flipping the switch in the database for each of those three, 66.7% of all retailers (comprising 63.8% of locations) on the map now support NFC. Definitely a massive improvement from even earlier this year. Now to see if usage by customers actually picks up.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Another change to the site that was probably a long time coming: the ability to confirm business locations without needing to report the business. Simply click on the "confirm" link or checkbox for the specific listing and the server will do the rest.
As for the rollout itself, it's still going. It's slowed down a fair bit compared to last year but that's a function of the majority of businesses now having EMV per the card networks. The remaining ones will mostly be restaurants and smaller businesses at this point, some of whom are likely feeling little impact from the liability shift. Oh, and gas pumps will likely still be an issue through 2020 and beyond too.
Some good news, however: NFC enabled businesses are approaching 60% of all business listings on the website. Merchant support appears to be becoming less and less of an issue, although there will likely still be holdouts due to the unique challenges of the US market.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
I created a Wiki attached to this site to permit tracking additional information that can't easily fit in the current map. I'm thinking stuff like terminals used, bugs with contactless/EMV, etc., but it's ultimately up to you, the visitor. Each entry on the site now has a link to its own page for easy access/modification, too. Let me know what you think over at reddit.
Oh yeah, Safeway's gas pumps have EMV now. No contactless though, but still, they've beaten every other major chain, even Shell (who were supposed to start testing late last year). Hopefully more come online later this year.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Visa recently reported that nearly 60 percent of US stores are now chip-enabled. That's got me wondering: how much longer will this site be relevant? On first glance, one would think that this site maybe has a year or two left at most. However, it's not just whether chip is supported, but how a store's supporting it. For instance:
In short, I suspect this site will still be useful for quite a while yet.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Enough said.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Not much has happened lately, really. More retailers got added to the map but there hasn't really been a big change in what they're enabling. Restaurants still aren't going with wireless terminals, for example, and the rest seem to only be enabling contactless about half the time.
There is one new Quick Chip merchant, however: The Fresh Market. I will admit that the insert/remove part is pretty fast, but still, it's not like you'll be allowed to take your purchases until after the card's authorized. That's the part that people usually miss when they say that a place runs chip "fast"--not to mention that a lot of the speed improvements are possible without enabling it (see Walgreens for an example).
I guess all we're waiting on is gas pumps at this point, and those might still take a couple of years.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
It's been a while since I last made a post. To be honest, not much has really happened. Sure, there have been a few retailer adds since the last post but most were ones that probably should have been added a while ago.
Okay, one thing has happened: CVS adopted Quick Chip. They probably needed to, though, since their chip implementation was so slow in the first place. Unfortunately, that came at the expense of auto-selecting the domestic debit application (aka common AID) on the card, so it's going to be more of a challenge to test online PIN support for Visa/MC in the future. Not that online PIN in itself is all that commonly implemented at the terminal level in the US, but still.
There's also an official QR code specification now thanks to UnionPay. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if that gets some traction in the US for some reason.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Happy early Memorial Day! I added a Quick Chip field to each of the entries on the map. This is important mainly so that visitors can see which businesses will not push PIN changes to offline PIN capable cards. Depending on how common QC implementation ends up becoming (currently Costco, Brookstone and O'Reilly Auto Parts of the major stores), this could be a significant issue for cards such as the Arrival+ from Barclaycard as online PIN support is still fairly lacking outside of some major retailers and PIN in general is tried for unmanned terminals when possible (not just outside the US as with most cards that support PIN for purchases).
As a side note, the few issuers that prefer offline PIN--such as UNFCU and Diners Club--either require PIN changes to happen at ATMs or simply don't allow them at all. Either approach is probably not realistic for cards that are supposed to prefer signature for all manned terminals, however, and is questionable for PIN preferring cards when ATMs don't really support it without hacks (such as having to change the PIN for Diners Club over the phone and then performing an ATM transaction to finalize it).
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Happy Easter, everyone!
So, Costco finally got the chip. Unfortunately no contactless (yet?). They also have Quick Chip but it still felt pretty slow. Will TPTB start to realize that it's the POS/card communication that's the problem and not the authorization time? (Well, most of the time anyway. A lot of smaller places still use dialup.) At least PIN isn't disabled.
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Happy belated Valentine's Day! Upgrades continue abrisk now that the holiday season's done. McDonald's is particularly notable as they were supposedly anti-EMV for a long time, but now seem to actually be adopting EMV contact+contactless support (possibly including CDCVM as well, but that's still unconfirmed).
Also notable is that two of the stores below (O'Reilly Auto Parts and Brookstone) appear to have Visa Quick Chip. I fully expect most other stores to eventually adopt it, as not being able to insert/remove during item scanning is a surprisingly big complaint amongst Americans. Not to mention that without it, a significant number of merchants would likely not adopt EMV for a very long time, if ever.
Finally, unattended terminals are finally getting EMV. For example, I ran into a car wash that did not have anyone taking payment in person that supported EMV on both the contact and contactless interfaces. I'm not sure how common unattended terminals really are here, though, but I did add a checkbox to each business listing and a filter option so that any of those can be seen independent of the others.
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
I've moved the map options to a separate dialog box and added two new ones: show only gas stations with EMV at the pump and show only restaurants with pay at the table. While currently rare, this will allow easier tracking of those places as more come online. (The moving to a separate dialog box also ensures that the site continues to be usable over mobile.)
In other news, gas stations now have until 2020 to support EMV at the pump. This is probably for the best since apparently very few have even been able to install the hardware, let alone the software. Visa/MC likely decided it wasn't worth the trouble, especially in light of the amount of flak they got after October 2015 (despite the problems being mostly merchant-inflicted). In practice, I can see Shell, ExxonMobil, Arco and maybe some Chevron and 76 stations making the original October 2017 deadline anyway since most already have the needed hardware.
Anyway, hope 2017 works out better than 2016 has.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
We're coming up on the holiday season again. Way too soon too, since everyone seems to already be playing the Christmas music. Wasn't it better when that stuff didn't start until the week of Thanksgiving? Anyway, that means that there probably won't be much in the way of major stores enabling EMV until after the New Year--but then again, CVS enabled EMV during December of last year.
Something else to watch: the Federal Reserve apparently agrees with Walmart with regard to debit routing. This may mean that they and other major retailers may begin forcing debit cards to be run as debit again, which could very well make things even less consistent for the customer than they already were. Not to mention force some to pay fees to their banks that they wouldn't have needed to otherwise.
* * *
Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online:
Well, it's been a year since EMV officially became a thing in the US. How did everyone do? In short, not good: only about 30% of all retailers have managed to enable it. Procrastinating retailers at the places that managed to enable it also rushed out software that made the experience a lot worse than it otherwise could have been.
That's not to say it's all bad. A lot of progress was still made, especially with contactless payment: 44% of retailers (and 60% of locations) on the map have it enabled. Use of the various Pays is still pretty low, however.
Anyway, check back next October to see whether any gas stations made their deadline.
* * *
Since last update, these stores came online:
* Supports contactless
Since last update, these stores came online:
* Supports contactless
** Possibly supports contactless (unconfirmed)
10 of 18 major retailers above support contactless (or 11/18 if you count Fry's). In other words, 55-61% of the above list. It's a slightly higher percentage than the site's current stats, which bodes well for the supposed eventual three fourths by late next year. We'll see if that ultimately happens; I still think a lot of smaller businesses will effectively not support contactless even if their hardware and software does due to poor terminal positioning and low demand from customers.
Happy 4th of July, everyone! That is all.
...kidding, that's not all. Since the last update: El Pollo Loco, Subway, Sears* (no K-Mart for some reason), Barnes and Noble*, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Microsoft Store, Lego Store, Foot Locker (though I think this has been enabled for a while), Ace Hardware, Steak 'n Shake and Hard Rock Cafe* (also probably been enabled for a while). (* = no contactless)
Hard Rock Cafe is supposedly using a setup similar to what The Stinking Rose in SF is using. For reference:
Needless to say, there's no pay at the table there. That's probably going to be the case for most restaurants, unfortunately, because as it turns out contactless isn't enough of a justification absent anything mandating pay at the table. Debit support isn't exactly one either due to the Durbin interchange caps, plus it's possible that tip fraud simply isn't a big enough issue for the banks.
I also seem to be getting proved right in terms of CVM support. Terminals seem to be losing PIN support altogether, or at least for low-value transactions. And since around 80% of transactions are under $50 anyway, being asked for a PIN only 20% of the time is a recipe for customer service disaster at the banks. Oh well, I suppose.
Contactless acceptance officially broke the 40% mark in both number of locations (45.8%) and number of unique retailers (41.9%) during this past month. I was honestly expecting it to stay at around the low 30% mark. That said, there are still a lot of places out there that hide their terminals or don't even know about the feature, so it could be quite a while before acceptance is close to what it's like in other countries.
Also, apparently H-E-B didn't have EMV turned on after all. They've been removed from the map for the time being. On the other hand, a bunch of other places have turned EMV on (Big Lots, SuperValu/Albertsons, ShopRite, Staples, Family Dollar, Total Wine & More, Petco, GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, among others). It does kinda make me wonder if an October 2016 liability shift date would have caused less merchant angst in the end though.
CardHub did a survey of some major retailers and thanks to their efforts, discovered a few additional major retailers that have enabled EMV. Those include H-E-B, Menards and Dairy Queen. Dick's Sporting Goods, H&M and Toys"R"Us/Babies"R"Us have also enabled EMV since the last news update.
There was also a slight uptick in the level of contactless acceptance at the retailer level (38.4%) but also a downtick in the number of physical locations accepting it (32.5%). This is possibly due to difficulties by customers in using it on hardware that supports it. For instance, a local (to me) Mexican fast food chain here is on the MasterCard contactless map and this website but makes their terminals impossible to access for anyone other than the staff. Unfortunately this will also be a challenge for anyone visiting the US with cards that require a PIN, as I've discovered on more than one occasion.
On the other hand, Citi is apparently issuing a couple of their cards as contactless now. It seems to be on an opt-in basis at the moment, but perhaps it will be the default in the future. (AmEx has had such cards for more than a year but still requires one to call in to request them, leading me to think that there's either some sort of acceptance issue or doesn't think the US market can handle contactless. Which considering how popular the various RFID shielding devices are despite the current cards not being capable of wireless transmission, may be a good choice right now.)
Anyway, I'm expecting Big Lots and Grocery Outlet to enable EMV soon from what I've heard. There's no indication of such at my local locations yet based on checking over the last month, but that should change soon.
Now that we're a few months past the holidays, activity seems to be really picking up among the major retailers. Michaels, Kroger, GNC, Nordstrom, BevMo, Dollar General, Pep Boys and Kohl's have all turned things on since the last update. Unfortunately most of the above have not enabled NFC/Apple Pay support at the same time. Time will tell whether that is only temporary or a sign of continued retailer resistance towards anything other than "chip and PIN".
Speaking of "chip and PIN", they're still complaining about that. Never mind that they had four years of advanced notice on the credit side of things and could have had the hardware and software ready long before the October shift date. Debit only had ~1.5 years lead time but let's be honest: people prefer running their debit cards as credit anyway because of the zero liability policies of Visa and MasterCard. And in a lot of ways technologies like Apple Pay are even better: biometrics are much less likely to be guessed vs. an authentication mechanism where a quarter of the PINs used are the same 20 of them, not to mention the faster transaction performance. If retailers care so much about security, why are they so closed minded over other alternatives?
At least some of the holdouts have a fire lit under them, for what it's worth.
Apologies for the late update. Not much is new since the last posting. CVS rolled out EMV to all of its stores over the holiday (and then backed it out at some locations). Probably for the best since their implementation is currently very slow.
Starbucks also seems to have chosen about 12 San Diego locations to trial EMV and NFC payments. From my multiple visits to different locations, I've been able to conclude with some certainty that a listing on MasterCard's site means that the location supports EMV as well. They also aren't taking the opportunity to support the "traditional" debit networks now that they're getting PIN pads, which isn't surprising--Visa and MasterCard are effectively our national debit networks for better or worse.
As for the rest, the early numbers are coming in and it doesn't look good: 8.5% of major retailers managed to enable EMV in 2015. The silver lining is that the majority of the remaining retailers are ready or almost so, which may mean that we'll reach our original 45-50% estimate only a year or so late. Almost makes me think we should have granted the extension to 2016, except retailers would probably still procrastinate and end up pushing everything out to 2017.
In website related news, I added a page clarifying the purpose of each of the checkboxes when adding a business. Hopefully that should alleviate the confusion that some have experienced when filling that form out.
Looks like only Trader Joe's and Macy's actually turned on EMV since the previous update. Not that I'm surprised since we're now in the holiday season but it would have been nice to see more Costco locations enabled, for instance. Or for Kroger to roll it out to the rest of their stores. More smaller businesses are coming online every day though, which is always good news.
Anyway, I don't foresee any more major retailers enabling EMV until early next year but who knows? In any case, hopefully everyone has an awesome holiday season.
Recently I added the Apple Store to the map. Because there are fewer than 500 stores in the US, it wasn't considered a "large" retailer and was thus not filtered out when a user selects the option from the main page. That's pretty ridiculous, to be honest--Apple is #14 on the NRF's major retailer chart and by all accounts does not count as a "small" business (which was the original purpose of the filtering option).
Therefore, starting today, the criteria for that filtering option has changed. Retailers with more than 500 locations across all brands will continue to be filtered, but brands owned by retailers on the NRF's chart will also be filtered regardless of the number of locations. This should hopefully make the "major" retailer filter less ambiguous.
In other news, Rite Aid also seems to be rolling out EMV. It may not be at all locations yet though so most are "unconfirmed" on the map.
So the liability shift date came and went a few days ago and merchant preparedness went about as well as I expected. That is, not well; I'm still swiping for the vast majority of transactions. This just means that the vast majority of retailers are now on the hook for counterfeit fraud until they get around to turning things on.
There are a few that seem to be in the process of turning support on at their terminals. These include Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Kohl's, Costco, Macy's, Sprouts, Petco and Dollar Tree. However, these retailers are still swipe-only (or swipe/tap only) in my local area as of this writing. I would be particularly interested in finding out whether Costco and Dollar Tree can do NFC transactions now, if anyone knows.
Kroger also is currently piloting EMV in one Illinois location, with nationwide rollout still TBD. They in particular anticipated an on-time rollout, which they completely missed. Oh well, most retailers likely won't enable it until 2016 now anyway due to the upcoming holiday shopping season.
No more days until the liability shift.
Walgreens officially announced EMV/chip support yesterday. They're (along with Duane Reade, also owned by Walgreens) now on the map. That brings the total number of major retailers supporting EMV up to 6. The bad news is that unless a bunch of other retailers flip things on today or overnight, many will miss the deadline. Only time will tell.
Anyway, this site was mentioned by a TV news station a couple of days ago, which is cool. If you visited from there, thanks for viewing and contributing to the map! What surprised me more is that banks and CUs are taking notice. Speaking of them, a special thanks goes to Coastal Federal Credit Union in Raleigh, NC for mentioning this website in their chip card educational materials!
3 days until the liability shift.
Best Buy's supposed to finish rolling out EMV by tomorrow, so I added the remaining locations to the map. Walgreens is supposed to finish by the 30th, so those will be added then as well. I haven't seen any others around here so I don't know when exactly those will happen, but hopefully it's not just those three (along with Home Depot, Walmart, Target and Gap) that made it.
Also, I added the ability to go directly to a map location. Just put #[latitude],[longitude] at the end of the URL). See the recent businesses page for an idea of how to format the URL. It will also pop open the information for the listing if there's anything available.
Anyway, happy dipping!
One week (7 days) until the liability shift.
I updated the recent businesses page to a) add some statistics that might be of interest and b) make recent small business additions more visible. (b) will become important very soon since I am anticipating a large number of major retailer locations being added to the map in a short period of time.
Speaking of retailers, who do you think will make the deadline? Post your thoughts here.
Two weeks (14 days) until the liability shift.
No major updates. Walgreens and Best Buy appear to be turning on their chip slots, possibly Staples too. Kroger may also do so soon as well from what I've seen elsewhere. Unfortunately I'm not hearing much about other retailers, so either it's being kept really quiet or the lower end of analysts' estimates for EMV terminal penetration is correct. Hopefully not the latter.
We'll see in any case. At least our cards will work a bit better overseas.
60 days until the liability shift.
I made a slight improvement to how listings are shown to hopefully reduce confusion. Before, every pin was treated as though it had multiple businesses and showed businesses as a list, even if there was only one business. This made it seem like there was no business name on a glance. As of today, green/red pins (indicating only a single business) will show that business in the text box; you can add an additional business by clicking on the "add business" link in the popup. The way yellow pins are treated has not changed.
I also made a slight improvement to reporting--you can now optionally enter your email address to include with the report. Doing so will allow me to ask for additional information if required and permanently works around a really annoying issue with prompt boxes and Safari.
if you have any questions or problems, do not hesitate to contact the mods of /r/chipcards for help.
88 days until the liability shift.
I pushed a major change to the site tonight that should make adding multiple businesses to a single address (e.g. inside a shopping mall) easier. These changes boil down to the following:
Hopefully this makes adding mall and similar entries a lot easier. As always, if you have any questions or problems, do not hesitate to contact the mods of /r/chipcards for help.
98 days until the liability shift.
Some Targets appear to be turning chip on now. I've seen a definite date of some time in late August for when all of their US locations will be EMV enabled. They will be the third major retailer to enable it in their stores. Unfortunately it looks like the majority of major retailers are going to wait until the very last second for various reasons. October 1st may be interesting in a not so good way.
Also, a Federal Reserve governor has basically said that FIs should reconsider signature as a form of cardholder verification. His comments seem to stop short of recommending PIN though. If this does cause any change in the way physical cards are configured, it likely won't be for at least an issuing cycle simply due to the number of chip and signature cards already out there.
BTW, there are 7158 businesses on the map as of this posting. Contributions are definitely appreciated (and if you're from a merchant acquirer and want to drop a link to this site to your clients, that would be awesome.)
119 days until the liability shift.
A few changes since last update:
As always, if you have any questions or problems, do not hesitate to contact the mods of /r/chipcards for help.
Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) members were originally tracked on the map due to a boycott following the release of Apple Pay and the disablement of NFC at CVS and Rite-Aid. Due to former MCX members jumping off the sinking ship and a realization that such tracking is out of scope for this site, this functionality has been removed.
In its place is the notion of "unconfirmed" businesses. These are locations that are part of a larger chain that is known to be rolling out EMV but have not been confirmed to have that functionality. This allows businesses like Home Depot (which is currently rolling out EMV) to be represented on the map even though there is no confirmation from their PR as to the current extent. These businesses use red pins on the map. To confirm these locations, simply report them and they will be updated accordingly. Businesses that are user-added will always show as confirmed.
If you have any questions or problems, do not hesitate to contact the mods of /r/chipcards for help.
Thanks for visiting! If you do run into any businesses that allow you to use the chip in your chip-enabled credit or debit card, please add it to the map. To do so, simply search for the business' name or address in the search box, check the checkboxes for things that the business supports (like NFC or PIN entry) and push "add business".
I've put up a page with sample terminal receipts here. This will allow one to figure out the terminal that was used for a particular transaction, especially since it appears likely that cards will still be taken away from cardholders for some transactions (namely restaurants). If you have a receipt to contribute, please PM the mods at /r/chipcards and it will be added.
Merchant Consumer Exchange is a consortium of retail businesses comprising of approximately 20% of US retail spending. They have all agreed to disable security enhancing technologies such as Apple Pay in favor of their own QR code based mobile payment solution (called CurrentC), which they claim is more secure. In reality, their real motivations for doing so are two-fold:
To that end, they have disabled NFC support at their retail stores and are doing everything possible to prevent progress in payment security. These locations are now in red on the map. Please prefer non-MCX merchants if at all possible. They are still on the map because they do support contact EMV, so they will not be removed at this time.