Compliance: Discover to Migrate to EMV by 2013
- The American card scheme Discover has now imposed to its acquirers to be able to process the EMV chip by 2013. Merchants directly connecting to the Discover clearing network are also involved. All are however free to chose:
- the authentication mode: PIN code or signature,
- the POS environment: on-line (connected) or off-line payment.
- Both contact and contactless payment –mobile included– are to be EMV compliant, in the US as well as in Canada and Mexico (where Discover has been present since 2003). Central America is not impacted, although the card scheme has been operating there since 2006.
See Visa and MasterCard US roadmaps in February 2012 Insight
- Discover targets country markets where rival schemes MasterCard and Visa have mandated a similar EMV migration time schedule a few months ago. This follows a series of significant partial roll-outs by the largest US issuers. Over the past decade, Discover has indeed grown worldwide substantially. As a result, it co-founded the PCI-SSC consortium in 2006, governing the worldwide card security standards.
- Launched in 1986, Discover is the third largest US card scheme and network. It also has been awning the Diners International credit card scheme since 2008 and the domestic “PULSE” ATM and debit card scheme since 2005. That year has seen an alliance with China UnionPay (CUP) as well, when the first CUP transaction was made in the US, to be followed by the first Discover transaction in China one year later. 2006 also witnessed the first debit cards, as well as an alliance with Japan JCB card scheme. In South Korea, a reciprocity agreement was reached with local BC card scheme in 2010.
- Discover has joined the ISIS initiative launched by US mobile operators to set up an m-payment scheme that same year. From 1997 to 2006, Discover had been a Morgan Stanley subsidiary.