HW #8

The article I have chose to read for homework assignment eight was titled “MasterCard, Visa moving U.S. credit cards to chip-and-pin by 2013”. The article was about how the top credit cards companies MasterCard and Visa are switching their United States customers to chip-and PIN technology by April of 2013. MasterCard is working to move the Unites States on the EMV standard to ensure that the payment infrastructure would be in place by April of 2013.  In August of 2011 Visa also put into place its plan to also implement the EMV technology by April of 2013. That this technology means is all credit cards will have the chip-and-pin technology that allows credit card users to simply slide their card with an embedded security chip inside into the reader at a store and enter a four digit pin. This technology is already in use in European countries and Canada. I have recently come into contact with this technology at my work at an Under Armour Outlet store. I had a Canadian customer who when trying to pay at my register kept trying to insert their card with the chip-and-pin technology into our credit card reader and enter their pin. Then I had to explain to the customer we don’t have that technology and the customer told me about how in Canada every place now offers this new technology. This interaction is what drew me into first reading this article. After reading this article I found it very interesting how it talked about credit cards in the future and offering mobile payment options. I feel like the idea of being able to pay for items in the store through a mobile phone would a cool idea in the future. It would speed up the shopping process for the customer and make the shopping experience more impersonal.  Also the idea of the magneprint technology is also very interesting for credit cards in the future. This technology would offer a unique, one of a kind identity to a magnet-striped cards based on the layout of its atoms. Both these technologies are very interesting and are going to change the way we shop with credit cards in the future.