Implications of not converting

Doing nothing is a major risk. One route for businesses could be to opt out of chip and PIN altogether. While this may appear to save costs in the short term or be tempting to businesses with low levels of plastic card transactions, long term this option has significant risks.

• Firstly, there is the liability shift for card fraud which could have been prevented by chip and PIN to the party which has not upgraded
• Secondly, retailers who have not implemented chip and PIN will be specifically targeted by fraudsters and fraud levels in these retailers may dramatically increase
• Thirdly, over the next few years new card products are likely to be introduced requiring the use of chip and PIN.

It is likely that your customers will increasingly expect transactions to be chip and PIN. Acting now will show your customers you are protecting them and ensure you are not leaving yourself exposed. By 31st December 2005 the Chip and PIN Programme aims to have a critical mass of terminals in place, so that the majority of transactions will be PIN-verified.

Find out more

• Shift of liability for fraudulent transactions