Merchants are being left with the liability for repaying fraudulent transactions because their side of the migration to chip/EMV project is being neglected by the two payment card schemes.There are now over four million EMV cards on issue in Australia, but few merchants have upgraded to compliant terminals, almost three years after the liability issue was settled.Ian Povey from CardsConsult, who has been recently involved in EMV projects in Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand and other countries agrees that the EMV/chip project in Australia is a 'dog's breakfast'. "The operating rule is the non-EMV party to the fraudulent transaction wears the fraud," said Povey."This liability shift was sufficient in many markets to maintain a reasonable balance of both issuing and acquiring adoption of EMV - not so here. "Australia faces an interesting issue now with a focus on supporting the merchant acquiring sector," said Povey."Many are looking for mandates or reasons to comply as the financial outlay and technical complexity on this side is far greater than that of the issuing side. The reliance on business case alone could see payment card accepting environment owners continuing to delay their investment to accept EMV for as long as possible. "The liability shift for Australia started back in the first quarter of 2006. Yet while it is finally being recognised that this fraud does migrate across borders and Australia is a target - the online authorised nature of the sector and the still 'relatively' low fraud stats continue to thwart a concerted effort to get the job done."The schemes need to support acquirers more, says Povey."At the moment, issuers get incentivised by the schemes for doing things, including EMV migration."In other regions and other countries of the world those incentives, like revenue increments, include the issuing and the merchant side."The other way that has been used around the world is mandates but with the low level of fraud the liability issue is being ignored here and the merchants and acquirers are not being encouraged to migrate," said Povey."There needs to be more alignment, particularly from the schemes, between issuers and the acquiring side of the equation."The other big issue the EMV project has in Australia is the legacy architecture of the payments system."Australia is challenged by its complex bilateral technical links and lack of formally mandated and adopted standards and processes that would support a consistent experience at the POS for customers, merchant staff and the project teams tasked with making this migration a success. (One that should by right, be learning from the mistakes of other markets.)"