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The tide turned sharply this year for the U.S. payments card industry’s EMV migration, changing from a holding pattern to serious action plans. When U.S. payments networks in 2012 announced EMV liability shifts going into effect in October 2015 – to encourage chip card adoption – many issuers and merchants were circumspect about their plans.

There is a lot of talk these days about switching to virtual, digital and mobile payments. We hear every day about how soon we’ll be paying for holiday shopping sprees with our phones instead of our wallets and plastic gift cards. However, you probably didn’t know that the vast majority of Americans still prefer physical gift cards to electronic ones. Shocked? Don’t be fooled by all the hype surrounding mobile payments. Your organization will still benefit from offering traditional gift cards to buyers.

Swift Prepaid Solutions serves markets that undergo regular disruption – and any time a client changes, so must its cards. To save on operations and get cards to market faster, the corporate incentive program manager works with Arroweye for on-demand card marketing and delivery. “The industry has evolved and cards have become more customized; it became a requirement to find a partner who could do a lot of creative things using technology,” said Brian Levin, chief financial officer at Swift.

EMV has been implemented around the globe, but the US is lagging behind. Fear of high costs, uncertainty about chip specifications and cardholder verification methods, and intimidating regulatory requirements have all meant that many organizations have been slow to take on the challenge of implementing EMV, even though new regulations say they must, and the National Retail Federation says it is the only secure standard. The cost of the transition to EMV is estimated to be $8 billion, and that number, while staggering, is causing some retailers to stop dead in their tracks when it comes to implementation.

Smaller banks appear to have other priorities than issuing smart cards to customers. After October 1, 2015, liability for fraudulent transactions at the point of sale will pass to the party that has not updated to the EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa) global standard.

Arroweye CEO Render Dahiya outlines challenges and solutions in issuing smart chip payment cards.

Increased regulation and new technologies have transformed the banking and payment industries over the last decade. Our industry is constantly evolving and, the next big leap in that evolution is EMV “smart-chip” technology.

Paybefore today announced the Best-in-Category winners in 20 categories for its eighth annual Paybefore Awards. The competition was fierce with companies and programs from the U.S., Canada, Turkey, Gibraltar, U.A.E., U.K, South Africa and Russia vying for top honors.

Most issuing banks are not allowing recent retailer data breaches to change their schedules for adopting EMV-chip cards, even though Target and other companies have said they would fast-track their own plans.

Retailers at an industry confab here said that the retail and banking industries must reform their current payment practices to improve the security of customers’ information and avoid the type of data breaches recently experienced by Target Corp., TGT -0.92%

While most gift cards are still made of plastic, digital cards are increasing in popularity among consumers because of the many options to customize the cards “Mobile and virtual cards have an advantage in that they can be instantly delivered, purchased