New EMV Methods: Confusion To Reign Supreme

Visa introduced Quick Chip for EMV on April 19th and MasterCard quickly followed with the announcement of M/Chip Fast on April 21st. By speeding up how quickly the consumer can remove the card from the POS, these two networks have also increased complexity for the already complicated payment process as implemented by consumers, merchants, and issuers. Where once it was possible to have some confidence a card would work as long as the brand was displayed, life is now more complicated. Besides Swipe, Dip, and Tap, we now have Swipe, Hover (MST), Show (Chase Pay), Dip, Quick Dip, and Tap – to name a few.

Then there are is the question of compatibility. NFC won't work at non-NFC terminals while a Samsung device with MST will. Swiping an EMV card forces a dip, but only at terminals that support EMV. I'm in payments and I have no idea what happens if I present an EMV enabled card within my Samsung Pay device and use MST to communicate it to a POS that only supports swipe and EMV – does it ask me to dip my phone?