New Credit Card Standard for Health Clubs

Answers to Five FAQs Related to the New Credit Card Standard for Fitness Facilities.

Ready or not, the world of payments is evolving. Starting this October, the nationwide shift to EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) will become regulation and will affect your ability to protect your club from risk and fraud. Is your club ready for the new payment card standards that will begin to reshape how most customers pay for products and services?

EMV is becoming the global standard for credit card and debit cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions. Because of recent data breaches and increasing rates of counterfeit card fraud, U.S. card issuers are migrating to this new technology to protect consumers.

How the EMV Credit Card Standard Will Affect Your Club

Your members will start receiving their replacement cards soon, if they have not already, so the switch to EMV means adding new in-club technology and internal processing systems, and complying with new liability rules that will support these new chip cards will keep you, the merchant, from having to pay any unnecessary fees.

Something as drastic as changing your club’s point of sale system is going to raise questions. Here are answers to five frequently asked questions to help you understand what you can expect from the EMV shift.

What makes EMV cards more secure than traditional cards?
The magnetic stripe on traditional credit and debit cards contains unchanging data, and whoever accesses that data gains the sensitive card and cardholder information necessary to make purchases. In contrast, every time an EMV card is used for payment, the card chip creates a unique transaction code that cannot be used again. EMV technology will not prevent data breaches from occurring, but it will make it harder for criminals to profit from what they steal.

Is my club required to support EMV?
At this moment, you are not required to support EMV in the United States. However, starting in October, you will be required to support this new technology. Just remember that even if your club hasn’t experienced high levels of card in the past, you may be putting yourself at risk in the future. Therefore, you may want to ensure that all your terminals are EMV-chip-capable so you will be ready to accept these cards.

What other incentives are there to accepting chip cards?
It’ll save you some cash. The payment brands are doing their part to ensure that chip-bearing customers can pay at chip-enabled businesses. Visa and MasterCard have issued rules and guidelines for processors and merchants to support EMV chip technology.

Visa is introducing its Technology Innovation Program (TIP) to the United States. The program waives an annual PCI-DSS audit if 75 percent of the merchant’s Visa transactions are processed through a dual contactless and contact EMV certified device. MasterCard is introducing its PCI-DSS Compliance Validation Exemption Program, which also waives the annual PCI-DSS audit if 75 percent of the merchants’ MasterCard transactions are processed through a dual contactless and contact EMV certified device. Saving money is always a plus.

Why should I invest in EMV chip card acceptance now?
Preventing the growth of fraud is one of the main reasons the industry is moving toward EMV technology—and this also includes the fitness industry. Chip cards make it difficult for thieves to target cardholders and businesses alike. As a result, more chip cards are being introduced by U.S. financial institutions in order to support the switch to this technology.

How am I affected by the liability shift?
With the liability shift, if a chip card is presented at your club and you have not adopted a terminal that is certified for chip card acceptance, liability for counterfeit fraud may shift to your acquiring bank—who may then pass this fee back to you.

The liability shift encourages chip adoption because any chip-on-chip transaction (chip card read by a chip-certified terminal) provides the dynamic authentication data that helps to better protect all parties. In addition, if a counterfeit magnetic stripe card is presented at a chip-certified terminal, the liability for the counterfeit fraud will be the responsibility of the card issuer.

Note: Do you need a plan of attack so that your club is prepared for the EMV shift? Join Jonas Fitness at IHRSA March 11, 2015, at 1:30 p.m. for its EMV Readiness chat and hear from payment processing and data security experts on what it means for your point-of-sale and ecommerce systems, including your in-club hardware and websites and what you need to do to be compliant before October comes.

BIO

Scott M. Burgess is vice president of operations and infrastructure for Jonas Fitness Inc. He is responsible for the daily operations of the Jonas Fitness data center, software and EFT support, managed billing services and implementations. His responsibilities include providing overall leadership to the division, strategic short-term and long-range planning along with program development, and defining operational goals. Before joining Jonas Fitness, Burgess was director, client services for the CheckFree banking electronic commerce division responsible for the project management, engineering, certification testing and support services implementation teams. He has15 years of experience in operational support and implementation of software and services in the health and fitness and electronic commerce industries along with more than 11 years of executive management experience. Burgess has a bachelor of science from Ohio State University.

Ready or not, the world of payments is evolving. Starting this October, the nationwide shift to EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) will become regulation and will affect your ability to protect your club from risk and fraud. Is your club ready for the new payment card standards that will begin to reshape how most customers pay for products and services?

EMV is becoming the global standard for credit card and debit cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions. Because of recent data breaches and increasing rates of counterfeit card fraud, U.S. card issuers are migrating to this new technology to protect consumers.

How the EMV Credit Card Standard Will Affect Your Club

Your members will start receiving their replacement cards soon, if they have not already, so the switch to EMV means adding new in-club technology and internal processing systems, and complying with new liability rules that will support these new chip cards will keep you, the merchant, from having to pay any unnecessary fees.

Something as drastic as changing your club’s point of sale system is going to raise questions. Here are answers to five frequently asked questions to help you understand what you can expect from the EMV shift.

What makes EMV cards more secure than traditional cards?
The magnetic stripe on traditional credit and debit cards contains unchanging data, and whoever accesses that data gains the sensitive card and cardholder information necessary to make purchases. In contrast, every time an EMV card is used for payment, the card chip creates a unique transaction code that cannot be used again. EMV technology will not prevent data breaches from occurring, but it will make it harder for criminals to profit from what they steal.

Is my club required to support EMV?
At this moment, you are not required to support EMV in the United States. However, starting in October, you will be required to support this new technology. Just remember that even if your club hasn’t experienced high levels of card in the past, you may be putting yourself at risk in the future. Therefore, you may want to ensure that all your terminals are EMV-chip-capable so you will be ready to accept these cards.

What other incentives are there to accepting chip cards?
It’ll save you some cash. The payment brands are doing their part to ensure that chip-bearing customers can pay at chip-enabled businesses. Visa and MasterCard have issued rules and guidelines for processors and merchants to support EMV chip technology.

Visa is introducing its Technology Innovation Program (TIP) to the United States. The program waives an annual PCI-DSS audit if 75 percent of the merchant’s Visa transactions are processed through a dual contactless and contact EMV certified device. MasterCard is introducing its PCI-DSS Compliance Validation Exemption Program, which also waives the annual PCI-DSS audit if 75 percent of the merchants’ MasterCard transactions are processed through a dual contactless and contact EMV certified device. Saving money is always a plus.

Why should I invest in EMV chip card acceptance now?
Preventing the growth of fraud is one of the main reasons the industry is moving toward EMV technology—and this also includes the fitness industry. Chip cards make it difficult for thieves to target cardholders and businesses alike. As a result, more chip cards are being introduced by U.S. financial institutions in order to support the switch to this technology.

How am I affected by the liability shift?
With the liability shift, if a chip card is presented at your club and you have not adopted a terminal that is certified for chip card acceptance, liability for counterfeit fraud may shift to your acquiring bank—who may then pass this fee back to you.

The liability shift encourages chip adoption because any chip-on-chip transaction (chip card read by a chip-certified terminal) provides the dynamic authentication data that helps to better protect all parties. In addition, if a counterfeit magnetic stripe card is presented at a chip-certified terminal, the liability for the counterfeit fraud will be the responsibility of the card issuer.

Note: Do you need a plan of attack so that your club is prepared for the EMV shift? Join Jonas Fitness at IHRSA March 11, 2015, at 1:30 p.m. for its EMV Readiness chat and hear from payment processing and data security experts on what it means for your point-of-sale and ecommerce systems, including your in-club hardware and websites and what you need to do to be compliant before October comes.

BIO

Scott M. Burgess is vice president of operations and infrastructure for Jonas Fitness Inc. He is responsible for the daily operations of the Jonas Fitness data center, software and EFT support, managed billing services and implementations. His responsibilities include providing overall leadership to the division, strategic short-term and long-range planning along with program development, and defining operational goals. Before joining Jonas Fitness, Burgess was director, client services for the CheckFree banking electronic commerce division responsible for the project management, engineering, certification testing and support services implementation teams. He has15 years of experience in operational support and implementation of software and services in the health and fitness and electronic commerce industries along with more than 11 years of executive management experience. Burgess has a bachelor of science from Ohio State University.