ARLINGTON, Va. – Retailers have spent billions upgrading their point-of-sale systems to process new chip cards ahead of the looming Oct. 1 liability shift deadline. As of July, approximately 295,000 merchants are ready to receive chip cards—a 19% bump from June’s compliance numbers. In addition, nearly 37,000 ATMs have EMV chip-readability.

However, Visa announced recently that as of July, less than 18% of its 720 million credit and debit cards have the embedded chip and thus are ready for the EMV shift in October. Some merchants also wonder why banks and credit unions are issuing chip and signature cards, rather than the chip and PIN cards used elsewhere.

Brian Dodge, executive vice president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), said that large retailers have made tremendous progress installing, testing and now operating new payment terminals to accept chip cards. “But while consumers can now spot these new point-of-sale terminals at many large retailers nationwide, a quick check of the wallet will confirm that many continue to carry cards secured with the outdated and vulnerable magnetic stripe,” he added.

“We have watched EMV card issuance lag terminal deployment in virtually every global market going through EMV implementation,” said Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus. “While it is hard to understand why issuers would not support a systems upgrade that reduces fraud, it also provides the many retailers unable to meet the liability shift dates with a holiday, as liability shift will not happen unless an issuer has the majority of their card base EMV capable.”

For more about EMV and convenience stores, read “Half Covered,” from NACS Magazine.