How to Become EMV Compliant

Written by

James Davis

Written by James Davis

Senior Technical Writer at United Thinkers

Author of the Paylosophy blog, a veteran writer, and a stock analyst with extensive knowledge and experience in the financial services industry that allows me to cover the latest payment industry news, developments, and insights. Read more

Reviewed by

Kathrine Pensatori

Reviewed by Kathrine Pensatori

Product Specialist at United Thinkers

Product specialist with more than 10 years of experience in the Payment Processing Industry. I help payment facilitators and PSPs solve their various payment processing issues. Read more

EMV compliance is an important issue, faced by today’s merchants. In order to become EMV compliant, a merchant should implement a payment terminal solution, which allows it to accept EMV chip card payments. Particular steps to be taken, i.e. the merchant’s strategy for implementation of the EMV standard, depend on the terminal solution, which is already in place.

EMV Standard

If a merchant does not yet have any solutions in place, it has to start from scratch. If a merchant uses a so-called standalone terminal solution, granted by the merchant services provider, the terminals are not integrated with the POS system. In this case the current MSP may be able of providing some EMV terminal solution to the merchant. If it is not, another MSP with suitable pricing options can be addressed by the merchant.

If a merchant uses an integrated terminal solution (POS terminal solution), provided by the MSP, it can address either the current MSP, or a new one, to get EMV compliant terminals. In the latter case, the merchant must devise a new EMV integration strategy.

If the merchant’s payment terminal application was developed by the merchant and not provided by the MSP, the merchant should go through EMV certification process.

More information on how to become EMV compliant is available in the respective article on Paylosophy.