Debit cards still have a long way to go, however. Of those 151.8 million Visa EMV cards in circulation, only about 40% are debit, the company said.

The eight financial institutions that make up the Payments Security Task Force also shared numbers on Wednesday. They said 30% of their U.S. credit and debit cards contained EMV chips as of June 30. Those issuers represent approximately 50% of U.S. payment card volume.

Where the Merchants Stand

One quarter (26%) of national and regional merchants with multiple locations now take EMV, according to MasterCard. That number looks even smaller under the light of individual merchant locations, however.

As of Sept. 15, there were six to eight million merchant locations in the United States, but just 314,000 merchant locations had EMV-ready terminals, Visa said. That's up from 55,000 this time last year, it noted.

Not all merchants need to buy new equipment. About 30% to 40% of existing merchant terminals have chip hardware and just need the software, Visa said.

Where the Processors Stand

Announcements from some processors also revealed their progress to date.

On Tuesday, for example, payment processor Jack Henry & Associates announced it went live with MasterCard and Visa EMV debit card processing. It will support Discover cards soon, it said.

The Members Group also reported that 98% of its credit-issuing clients had completed or initiated EMV migration, though only about 25% of the credit and debit cards in its portfolio were chip-enabled. Chole Casber, TMG's EMV product manager, said about 50% to 60% of its clients are electing for a mass reissue.

"As far as dollars spent from a project standpoint, it's slightly more expensive to do a mass reissue," Casber told CU Times. "It's a little bit easier to justify a natural reissue when it comes to ordering cards, and it makes it therefore a little bit cheaper because you can really put a better number on it because you have those good projections."

Future Expectations

By all indications, the conversion pace looks like it will pick up over the next 12 months.

"Because most are opting to push out new EMV chip debit cards to the entirety of their cardholder base, we expect debit penetration will be much faster than credit," Casber said.

More than 35% of TMG's debit-issuing clients will complete the transition to EMV or be in flight by the end of 2015, he said.

The Payments Security Task Force expects the number of its U.S. chip cards from its issuers to grow from 30% to 60% by the end of 2015, expanding to 98% by the end of 2017. A survey of PSTF acquirers also estimated that approximately 40% of their terminals will take chip cards by the end of the year.

However, a sudden onslaught of chargebacks likely won't be the main driver.

"The chargebacks don't start flowing through the system on day one," Visa Vice President of Global Risk Products Stephanie Ericksen said.

Only chip cards are eligible for chargebacks, and if the transaction was less than $25, there may not be one at all.

"It tends to cost them more to process the chargeback than they may recover from the chargeback," she said. "So about 50% of the time, they'll charge it back if it's less than $25, depending on the issuer's operating costs."