While Card Issuers and Acquirers/Processors actively implement chip technology, the payment networks have announced Liability Shift and Technical Fallback dates, at which time the liability for fraudulent transactions will shift to merchants that have not implemented Chip & PIN devices.
The Liability Shift timelines for each payment network are as follows:
On September 24, 2010, Visa Canada, MasterCard Canada and their Canadian card-issuing financial institutions announced a six-month extension for Canadian merchants to migrate to Chip-and-PIN point of sale technology, effective March 31, 2011.
This date signifies when Canadian merchants become liable for domestic card-present fraudulent transactions that may have been avoided by adopting Chip technology. Liability involving chip cards used at non-chip devices was originally slated to shift on October 1, 2010, but issuers will continue to absorb the liability for domestic transactions until March 31, 2011.
For more information, please refer to the Liability Shift press releases from Visa and MasterCard:
MasterCard Canada has extended the chip migration deadline for those Canadian petroleum retailers with pay-at-the-pump technology to December 31, 2012. This extension only applies to those petroleum retailers who have chosen to invest in Automatic Fuel Dispensers (AFD).
Visa Canada has extended the chip liability shift deadline for those Canadian petroleum retailers with pay-at-the-pump technology to December 31, 2012. Visa is providing to petroleum retailers a Conditional Concession that places the liability for fraudulent Automatic Fuel Dispenser transactions with Visa Issuers. Please contact Visa Canada or your Global Payments Sales Representative for more information regarding Visa’s Oil & Gas Conditional Concession package.
After the Liability Shift dates, merchants that do not have a chip-enabled POS and process a chip card transaction, will be liable for identified fraudulent transactions and chargebacks, such as; counterfeit, lost & stolen or card-not-received fraud, which could have been prevented by a chip card and chip-enabled device.
If you have not already updated to chip technology, you will be required to plan and implement for chip in order to meet the evolving payment card requirements that are starting to occur within Canada. Global Payments is actively engaged in chip migration to address Liability Shift.