Even though the deadline was extended to April 17, 2021, many fuel merchants are unprepared to meet the upcoming EMV at the pump requirement. Those that don’t upgrade their fuel dispensers to an EMV reader before the deadline face costs and risks. While the COVID-19 pandemic may seem like the wrong time to enable EMV acceptance, it actually presents an opportunity for merchants to minimize potential losses associated with upgrading.

To learn more about the looming EMV requirement for automated fuel dispensers (AFDs) and why now is the time for operators to upgrade their gas pumps, PaymentsJournal sat down with Brian DuCharme, VP of Payments Product Management at Transaction Network Services (TNS) and Tim Sloane, VP of Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group.

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The EMV at the pump requirement

Historically, Financial Institution Issuers of credit and debit cards, branded with  branded schemes like like Mastercard and Visa have been responsible for card fraud losses experienced by merchants. As a result, the first version of an  EMV card was released in Europe in the mid-1990s. The United States was the last major developed market to adopt CHIP technology,  with the first EMV credit and debit cards being introduced in 2011.

The reason behind this change is simple: EMV chip cards are more secure and less prone to fraud than magnetic stripe cards. Magnetic stripe cards were still largely used in the U.S. until 2015, which was the original deadline card companies issued for a majority of merchants to adopt EMV-capable point-of-sale systems. After that deadline, merchants without EMV card acceptance would be responsible for card fraud losses.

Fuel merchants had a later deadline of October 1, 2017 because deploying EMV is much more complicated for them. Multiple infrastructure and system updates, including the pump itself, pump controls, and in-store point-of-sale devices, need to be upgraded for fuel merchants to successfully deploy EMV.

But fuel merchants struggled to reach the 2017 deadline, causing it to be extended to October 2020. Later, Visa again extended the deadline to April 17, 2021 because of the monumental impact the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic was having on merchants. 

Many fuel merchants still haven’t upgraded to EMV…

A significant number of fuel vendors still haven’t upgraded their pumps to accept EMV cards. The Conexxus EMV survey, which was conducted in August 2019, found that 70% of vendors had not yet upgraded to EMV—but 80% intended to.