Insert to pay or tap to pay. Dual interface cards allow both. For many consumers, the tap to pay option feels faster, mirroring the speed of mobile transactions. Issuing dual interface cards offers community financial institutions (FIs) a new option to meet consumer demand for perceptibly faster transactions.
Recently, however, TMG has noticed some nuances with dual interface technology that may impact FIs. Specifically, at certain merchant locations, some transactions are showing up as entry mode 91, or magnetic stripe data, instead of dual interface EMV transactions. When these transactions are passed to processors for validation, the magnetic stripe CVV is read rather than the dynamic CVV, therefore the transactions are declined.
At this point, TMG and its processing partner First Data believe this is only impacting Visa-branded cards at Verifone terminals. Depending on the merchant’s point-of-sale (POS) terminal, there could be a couple of different issues at play:
- Merchant may need to upgrade POS terminals. Verifone recently sent out a notice that merchants using its technology need to upgrade their POS terminal software to reconfigure Terminal Transaction Qualifiers (TTQ). The TTQ is a Visa unique file within a POS terminal’s program that denotes the various ways the terminal can process contactless transactions. Without this upgraded software, the terminals may continue to experience CVV mismatches for contactless transactions.
- Contactless reader may too close to magnetic stripe reader. If this is the issue, the POS terminal’s contactless reader may be picking up a card’s contactless information as it is swiped. The terminal then receives conflicting data from two sources with the same message.
