Editorial: Target theft proves need for chip cards

’Tis the season of good will toward all, family meals and traditions, and shopping.
Unfortunately, ’tis also the season of sophisticated criminal rip-offs, like the massive data breach at all 1,797 Target stores in the United States, affecting 40 million credit card users between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/12/24/6024311/editorial-target-theft-proves.html#storylink=cpy

The rest of the world has migrated to more secure embedded microchip-based cards. The United States should, too.
  
Europe, Asia, Latin America and our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, already have adopted chip cards. They are the international standard for payment cards. More than 1.5 billion chip cards have been issued globally and more than three-quarters of payment terminals outside the United States accept chip cards.
The United States has been a laggard, sticking with the magnetic stripe technology of the 1960s.
Why? 
France and Germany have been using chip cards since the 1990s.
The United States, in contrast, has “let the payments industry decide what to do,” according to a 2011 report by First Data Corp., a global credit and debit card payments processor based in Atlanta.
The total cost of implementation – replacing cards and readers in the United States – has been estimated to be about $8 billion. Compare that with the annual cost of credit card fraud of $8.6 billion.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/12/24/6024311/editorial-target-theft-proves.html#storylink=cpy

Editorial: Target theft proves need for chip cards - Editorials - The Sacramento Bee

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