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Still here (02/07/2023)

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).

Endgame (04/03/2022)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Mid Year Update (07/15/2021)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Happy New Year (12/30/2020)

Let's just hope for a better 2021. Enough said.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Contactless++ (9/10/2020)

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.)

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

* Likely has had EMV for a while; only recently confirmed.

Stay safe (5/6/2020)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Happy Holidays (12/15/2019)

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.

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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.

New sister site (09/22/2019)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

9000 Less (07/28/2019)

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).

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

72% (04/17/2019)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Map updates (11/11/2018)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Major holdouts (09/05/2018)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

New features (06/10/2018)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Wiki (04/01/2018)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

How much longer? (03/01/2018)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Happy Christmas (12/25/2017)

Enough said.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Fast (09/27/2017)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Late update (07/17/2017)

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.

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:

Memorial Day (05/25/2017)

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).

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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added: