EMV becoming global payment standard

EMVCo have released an interesting press release that details the number of EMV cards and terminals, and the extent of EMV migration, in each geographic region of the world. According to their figures there are now more than 1 billion EMV cards in circulation worldwide and almost two-thirds of all terminals outside the United States now support  EMV payment standard.

The United States is excluded from all these figures that EMVCo have published, as there have been no EMV migration programs for either cards or terminals in this country. This does, therefore, leave a slightly skewed picture but nonetheless it can clearly be seen that the rest of the world is embracing EMV technology. The region where EMV is most dominant is Western and Central Europe, where almost two thirds of all cards are now EMV cards (representing over half of the global number of EMV cards) and only 1 in every 6 terminals do not support EMV, but there are still significant numbers of cards and terminals in other continents, suggesting that EMV has now reached critical mass and over the next few years global EMV migration is likely to continue apace.

The full EMVCo press release can be downloaded from the EMVCo website.

CreditCall’s range of EMV kernels provides a simple but powerful way to add EMV level 2 to payment devices. Check out www.emvx.co.uk for further details of these EMV level 2 kernels.