Chip card reality check: Oct. 1 deadline termed a ‘soft incentive’

Despite an Oct. 1 deadline for U.S. merchants to accept secure chip-enabled credit and debit cards, experts believe it will take years for the conversion.

“Realistically, we should expect the adoption of chip cards in the U.S. to take a few years,” said Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner who has been following the conversion for a decade, in an interview this week.

Oct. 1 is the deadline for merchants to begin using newer point-of-sale terminals to accept chip cards. Meanwhile, banks are steadily sending chip cards to millions of customers as replacements for magnetic stripe cards. Chip cards are more secure than the older technology, and the U.S. is one of the latest countries to make the conversion.

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