Spring is in the air, but for merchants planning for the liability shift in October, fall is not far away.
With this in mind, mobile point of sale innovator CardFlight has announced that its EMV-ready card chip readers are now available for merchants using the company’s SwipeSimple mPOS solution.
The October EMV liability shift is an effort to reduce credit card fraud in the U.S. Specifically, it refers to issue of who will take the blame – the bank or the merchant – when credit card fraud occurs on a card with a magnetic stripe rather than an embedded EMV chip. The upshot is that banks can protect themselves in the post-October 2015 era by offering their customers cards with the EMV technology, and merchants can protect themselves by deploying technology that can read EMV-enabled cards.
The EMV standard is widespread in other parts of the world, especially Europe, where EMV card adoption stands at more than 80%.
Above: CardFlight CEO Derek Webster presenting at FinovateSpring 2013.
Derek Webster, CardFlight founder and CEO, said: “By offering the EMV-ready readers today, CardFlight’s partners can be confident that they are giving their merchants future-proof technology that will last well beyond the October 2015 EMV liability shift.”
“While some providers have announced plans to offer mobile EMV card readers, CardFlight is one of the first to actually make them available for purchase and deployment in the United States.”
CardFlight also announced that it is teaming up with POS Portal, which will serve as a launch partner for the company’s EMV POS technology. POS Portal distributes more than 1,200 POS devices a day to merchants around the U.S.
CardFlight has enjoyed a strong momentum in recent months. The company reported in January that it partnered with Integrity Payment Systems, an Illinois-based company that processes $3 billion in credit card volume a year. In December, Merchants Choice Payment Systems, a full-service credit and debit processor that serves more than 50,000 merchants and processes $12 billion in sales volume a year, announced its plans to provide a custom mobile POS solution for its merchants, courtesy of CardFlight.
CardFlight has presented its technology at both Finovate (FinovateSpring 2013) and FinDEVr (FinDEVr San Francisco 2014) conferences. The company was founded in February 2013 and is headquartered in New York City.