EMVCo: More than 1 billion EMV cards in circulation
07 October, 2010
category: Contactless, Financial
EMVCo, the EMV standards body collectively owned by American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa, reports that over one billion EMV cards and 15.4 million EMV terminals are active globally as of September 1.
Furthermore, EMVCo says that 36% of total cards and 65% of total terminals in circulation are now based on the EMV standard.
According to EMVCo, Europe Zone 1 (Western) has the highest adoption of EMV technology with 555.7 million cards issued and 9.4 million terminals in place, representing an adoption rate of 65.4% of cards and 84.7% of terminals currently active in the region.
Within the Asia-Pacific region, 305.1 million cards and 3.2 million terminals are in operation, followed by the Canada, Latin American and the Caribbean region, which has 182.2 million cards and two million terminals in circulation. These two regions share a similar rate of EMV adoption with 26.6% and 26.4% for cards, and 41.6% and 55.6% for terminals, respectively.
In Europe Zone 2 (Eastern), 22.8 million cards and 458,000 terminals are now active, representing an adoption rate of 11.5% for cards and 61.2% for terminals.
16.8 million cards and 348,000 terminals have been deployed in Africa and the Middle East, representing an adoption rate of 13.7 percent for cards and 62.5 perent for terminals.
The U.S. is excluded from the figures as there are currently no EMV programs deployed.