Skip to content

Ellen Richey on the importance of EMV


Ellen Richey, Visa’s Vice Chairman for Risk & Public Policy, spoke with Square’s Head of Payments Partnerships Ginger Baker (and former Visa employee) about how layers of security help businesses stay secure in an increasingly risky environment.

The two women addressed a group of more than 250 women entrepreneurs at a Ladies Who Launch event in San Francisco. The topic at hand? New payment technologies that can help protect business owners from criminals and hackers.

Apple Pay, for example, uses three different technologies—biometric authentication, EMV chip and tokenization (replacing the user’s real account number with a device-specific digital account number)—to protect the payment chain.

“Technologies like EMV Chip can protect your customers from fraud and protect your business from hacking,” Richey said. “EMV chip helps devalue sensitive personal data so that merchants won’t be burdened with 16-digit account numbers that criminals want to steal.”

And, as Richey reminded the group, the upcoming liability shift in October 2015 makes chip adoption more important than ever for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to protect against potential liability.

“We expect nearly 60% of cards will have chip by end of year so you will start to see chip card in your stores soon,” she said.

You may also be interested in

Click to Pay with Visa

Enroll in Visa Checkout to get your customers from cart to conversion in fewer steps.

Learn more about Click to Pay with Visa

Mobile acceptance boosts small business

Giving consumers more ways to pay can really pay off.

Read the article

Top Tasks + Support

  • Security compliance
  • Info for small business
  • Start accepting Visa