NEWS ITEM
Wal-Mart executive calls for US move to Chip and PIN
US retailer Wal-Mart is calling on the nation’s banks to move to the international EMV standard for securing financial transactions at the point-of-sale. Speaking at the annual forum of the Smart Card Alliance, Jamie Henry, director of payment services, Wal-Mart Stores says the supermarket chain rejects the idea of investing in ‘band-aids’ such as end-to-end encryption and tokenisation.
OUR COMMENT
When Wal-Mart tried to drive RFID technology in the retail industry a few years ago, it resulted in a lot of buzz but nowhere near 100% adoption even several years after its original deadline passed. It remains to be seen how much impact its current call for EMV is going to make in the USA. But, one thing is for sure: the somewhat-flippant label like “band-aid” given by Wal-Mart is not going to help improve business prospects for nuBridges and other providers of E2EE and Tokenization technologies.