Report: FMI asks for delay in EMV rollout

Arlington, Va. – The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) is reportedly asking major credit card companies to delay the October 2015 mandate for U.S. retailers to comply with the Europay, Mastercard Visa (EMV) chip-based payment card standard. According to the Wall Street Journal, the FMI sent a letter to Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Financial Services asking for the deadline to be moved into 2016.



“Regardless of how strong the commitment or how many dollars invested, the reality is that the system will not be ready to meet the card networks’ arbitrarily-set mandate for the liability shift in October 2015,” Leslie Sarasin, president and CEO of FMI, said in the letter.



Sarasin’s letter also said that retailers have to wait 16 weeks to obtain hardware that can read chip-based payment cards and that the mandate is taking effect just as retailers enter the crucial holiday selling season. Currently, retailers will have to start accepting liability for any fraud resulting from a chip-based card transaction if they do not have EMV-compliant equipment as of October 2015.



The FMI has not yet received a response from any card companies. However, MasterCard and American Express said will not change the date, while Visa and Discover had no comment.