The ways a terminal can read your card depends on what your card has. If there’s a magnetic stripe, it can be swiped. If it has an EMV chip, it can be dipped. If it has the contactless indicator, it can be tapped on the terminal.
If your card has the contactless indicator, and the merchant accepts contactless payments, then you can tap to pay.
Chip cards, when used in conjunction with a personal identification number (PIN), are a solution to counterfeit and lost and stolen card fraud. The chip prevents the card from being counterfeited and the PIN uniquely identifies the owner of the card and prevents it from being used by someone else if lost or stolen. When a chip card is used at the point of sale, the transaction message sent by the chip card to authorise the transaction does not contain any data that can be used to counterfeit a chip or conduct an unauthorised chip transaction reusing the data from a previous transaction.
Chip card technology is already being used widely in Europe and Asia and has proven to be extremely effective in reducing fraud. As many countries migrate to chip and PIN technology, cardholders travelling overseas should be aware that if their card has been configured as a PIN preferring card by their issuer, they may need to use that PIN to verify their chip card transactions.
In addition to protecting against fraud, chip cards help to consolidate your wallet through the ability to combine multiple functions on one card, such as reward programs, discounts and special offers.
EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard, Visa, the three Organisations that developed and established EMV as the global standard for chip-based credit and debit transactions. The EMV standard helps to maximise security and global interoperability so that Visa cards can continue to be accepted around the world.
