The New York Times reports that Walmart-owned Sam's Club will announce a new credit card today that uses EMV chip technology, described as making the card "much more difficult to duplicate than those that use only a magnetic strip."
While the card technology is commonly used elsewhere in the world, the move by Sam's makes it "the first major American retailer to switch to a more secure payment card technology that has been widely discussed since a customer-data breach at Target late last year." Target had announced it would make the switch, but Sam's has beaten it to the punch … and Walmart plans to have its own EMV chip cards by this summer.
While the card technology is commonly used elsewhere in the world, the move by Sam's makes it "the first major American retailer to switch to a more secure payment card technology that has been widely discussed since a customer-data breach at Target late last year." Target had announced it would make the switch, but Sam's has beaten it to the punch … and Walmart plans to have its own EMV chip cards by this summer.
- KC's View:
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Give Walmart credit for being fast off the dime on this one. It matters … and then it starts promoting this card, the implication will be that Target is slow and Walmart is fast. Which has broader implications for the competition between the two.
