Today a small number of Attorneys General signed onto a letter regarding chip and PIN.
Contrary to the claims of a small group of retailer trade associations, PIN would have done nothing to prevent the breaches at Target, Home Depot, Michael’s and other retailers. This campaign to mandate PIN is an attempt to prevent the adoption of common sense data security standards, which could protect consumers by preventing hackers from stealing data from big box retailers.
Securing the payments system requires multi-layered security solutions, including chip cards, tokenization, biometrics and encryption that devalue data and protect consumers from fraud. Instead of investing in this misguided campaign, retailer associations should work with their members to adopt these valuable data security solutions that the payments industry has committed to implementing.