Survey: EMV implementation delaying retailers' other payment initiatives

Dive Brief:

EMV chip card and terminal implementation has become a priority for retailers this year, enough so that all of their focus on security issues has caused them to set aside other initiatives like mobile payments, a new survey from the National Retail Foundation and Forrester finds.
Asked about their top three priorities this year, 76% of CIOs and technology executives at 59 retailers said EMV is their top concern, while 46% cited chargeback issues often related to EMV, and 37% pointed to implementation of encryption and tokenization.
Only 17% of respondents cited mobile payments as one of their top issues for the year, although 72% said they expected to support near-field communication payment technology by the end of the year, largely because it's built into most EMV terminals.

Dive Insight:

If you were looking for more reasons to hate the EMV transition, you got 'em. Not that anyone was looking for more reasons, with new security concerns recently emerging about EMV on top of all the other drama between card companies and retailers.

The EMV transition is creeping along at its own pace from day to day, and will be finished at some point, but it's not good to hear that retailers dealing with this transition might be putting off other important decisions about mobile payments, a truly exciting technology transition that could mean more revenue and less cart abandonment for retailers.

There's also some feedback in the NRF/Forrester survey that mobile payments enablers may want to take a closer look at. While only 17% of those surveyed see it as a priority for this year, about 68% plan to accept only one or just a few types of mobile digital wallet payment options.

That latter figure will be a kick in the shorts to payment technology companies who might have felt that retailers would want to support as many payment options as possible. It could be especially concerning to those payment companies who have been a bit late to the party, and are not very entrenched with retailers.

Not that all of them need to worry—the survey suggests that once retailers do get past the EMV transition, about 76% of them plan to support Apple Pay. Maybe Apple need not worry about somewhat slow initial acceptance after all.