Is EMV adoption changing card payments? Evidence from the European Union

The EMV standard – a technology developed by Europay, MasterCard and Visa that protects information more effectively than magnetic stripes – aims to reduce fraud in face-to-face card payments. By influencing the perceived/real safety of card payments, this standard might be shaping payment habits. This paper examines the effect on cards usage of the migration process to EMV in the European Union. Using data for the period 2006-2011, we found evidence that the progress in the adoption of this standard had a statistically significant positive impact in card payments when controlling the effects of socio-demographic, economic, technological and institutional factors, particularly in non euro area countries.