MA MasterCard Incorporated

Visa Inc. on Thursday announced plans to speed up the process by which merchants certify equipment to start accepting chip cards, a move intended to help businesses accept more secure plastic and reduce fraud.

The changes come as delays in the certification process have drawn complaints from merchants, including a group in Florida that has sued Visa over the issue.

"Visa recognizes the importance of having the industry help merchants get their chip terminal solutions up and running quickly," so that everyone, especially consumers, can benefit from the powerful security protection of chip technology," said Oliver Jenkyn, an executive in the company's North America segment. He noted Visa has "taken steps to simplify the process as much as possible and help reduce any challenges so merchants can move forward with chip adoption quickly."

Retailers who haven't made the transition to chip cards have been responsible since last October for counterfeit transactions that used to be covered by card-issuing banks. Before a merchant can activate a new chip terminal, it has had to navigate varying implementation and testing methods since such methods differ and depend on businesses' complexity.

To reduce that friction, Visa said it has streamlined its testing requirements to cut the complexity, time and cost of implementation. Further, the card company is giving banks flexibility to self-certify their clients.

Visa also said it would step up in investment to support banks and the resellers that develop the software behind chip terminals. It said Thursday that it would provide funding to help acquirers "with any specific resource constraints they may be facing."

Since Visa shifted the burden of counterfeit costs to the party responsible for not yet having the chip, the merchant or the bank, costs have mounted from many merchants. The company said Thursday that it would modify its policy to block all U.S. counterfeit fraud chargebacks under $25, effective July 22, noting that smaller chargebacks "generate a great deal of work and expense for merchants and acquirers."

Home Depot Inc. recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard Inc., saying merchants pay too much for debit- and credit-card transactions and adding new contentions about the effectiveness of chip-based cards to reduce fraud. It also alleged that Visa and MasterCard had colluded to prevent adoption of the chip-based cards.

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 16, 2016 09:35 ET (13:35 GMT)

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