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Solutions for Communicating New Chip Card Tech to your Members

EMV, or Chip Cards, has a very important date looming: October 2015. This is when the EMV liability shift will take place. Julie Conroy, Retail Banking & Payments research director at Aite Group, expects that nearly 70% of cards to be chip-enabled by the end of 2015. This means that the big issue won’t be who has chip cards; it will be who has members that know how to use their chip card. “Chip cards work differently than traditional magnetic stripe plastics. Member education is a vital piece of the introduction of these plastics to the market place,” explains Rebekah Higgins, Vice President of Synergent Payment Services.

Synergent has solutions to help your credit union communicate this new technology to your members for a strong chip card migration strategy. Use these five best practices as you plan your member communications:

  1. Make sure all front line staff has a strong understanding of what members have to gain from the migration to chip technology with added security.
  2. Inform members about the new security embedded in a new chip card. Chip cards are difficult to copy, which provides enhanced security against card present fraud.
  3. Share information with staff to assure members know how to use cards at chip-enabled terminals.
  4. Train frontline staff so they are able to give tutorials to members.
  5. Make sure all current communications pieces are updated and promote consistently, and they are highly visible.

For staff and member education, Synergent’s Direct Marketing Services is prepared to help your credit union make this transition as smooth as possible, with statement insert designs to targeted email communications. Further, Synergent’s Corporate Marketing has completed announcement tutorial videos. To find out more about chip technology marketing materials, email marketingservice@synergentcorp.com or call 1-800-442-6515. What are your plans to implement EMV?