Chip cards are paying off in terms of reduced fraud. That's the conclusion of a new Visa report on transactions since the shift to EMV (named after original developers Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) cards in 2015.

According to Visa, merchants that have completed the shift to EMV cards have seen their fraud level drop by 76% from December 2015 through December 2017. Of particular note, Visa says that EMV cards have been very effective in reducing counterfeit fraud, which it calls the most common type of credit card fraud committed in the US.

By March of 2018, 97% of total credit card transactions took place using EMV cards. Since the formal shift to EMV cards, the number of cards with chips has risen from 159 million in September 2015 to 483.6 million in March 2018.

Visa says that more than 2.9 million merchant locations are now accepting EMV cards.

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