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“Most issuers are converting or planning to convert debit, credit and prepaid cards intended for routine POS usage to the EMV standard, and we see this trend accelerating in 2015.”
To stay atop best practices in the payments industry, it’s necessary to start EMV plans as early as pos- sible, and be flexible to suit various card and risk profiles, according to Render Dahiya, CEO of Arroweye Solutions. “If you’re a prepaid card
issuer, with all the pressure on payroll cards and compliance, you want to offer robust security with advanced card technology to miti- gate the risk associated with the heightened sensitivity on data breaches around payment cards,” he tells Paybefore.
EMV Vital for the Unbanked?
Not all prepaid cards will necessarily require EMV, issuers and card experts point out. Closed-loop gift cards, for example, are unlikely to
require the extra layers of counter- feit protection EMV provides, because of their limited usage.
“Some GPR cards are used just once after the initial load, so the cost of converting such cards to EMV will be a business decision each issuer must make,” Jamie Topolski, director of alternative payment strategies at Fiserv, tells Paybefore. And because of the variety of types of prepaid cards, there will be different consid- erations to weigh in deciding which
volume 7 • fall 2014
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