The FBI went back and forth Thursday, Friday and Saturday on a public service announcement about the security of new chip cards under the so-called EMV migration — issuing, then revoking and finally revising a PSA that originally made retailers happy but prompted complaints from the financial services industry.
The bureau’s initial version included lines such as “When using the EMV card at a PoS terminal, consumers should use the PIN, instead of a signature, to verify the transaction” — erroneous advice, since consumers in the U.S. generally don’t have the option of using PINs for credit card transactions. Brian Dodge, executive vice president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said the original language “should be a wake-up call to the banks and card networks that continue to stand in the way of making PIN authentication the standard in the U.S.” By Saturday, after the FBI had deleted the line about PINs, a pleased Electronic Payment Coalition was issuing a news release titled “FBI Releases Valuable Consumer Resource on EMV Migration.” http://bit.ly/1jjhCVN A story for Pros on the original kerfuffle, by Dave and your MC host: http://politico.pro/1JZCmH2