Grab your new credit card and get ready to dip your chip

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If you live in the United States and you have a credit card, chances are high your bank recently sent you a new card with an embedded smart chip. Banks and other card issuers are scurrying to put chip-enabled credit cards in their customers’ hands. Debits cards, too. These cards are critical for a new security system for card-based payments that will go into effect in the U.S. soon.

In the lingo of the payments industry, the new cards are called EMV cards. EMV is an open set of specifications for smart cards and other acceptance devices such as smart phones and fobs. EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, which are the three companies that developed the standard in 1994. Today the EMV standard is managed by EMVCo LLC, which has six member organizations – American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, UnionPay and Visa – and dozens of EMVCo associates. EMVCo makes decisions on a consensus basis to assure card infrastructure uniformity throughout the world.

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