The payments industry has invested a significant amount of time and resources enabling EMV over the past several years, and the effort has paid off. Visa announced last year that chip-enabled merchants nationwide reported a 43% reduction in counterfeit card fraud annually. There has also been significant progress at ATMs, as MasterCard's liability shift passed last October and Visa's comes into play this month. As more protections are put on these machines, it becomes harder for criminals to steal useful, sensitive consumer information, leading to a decrease in skimming at ATMs.

No matter how often you hear negatives around EMV, the fact is that it's working. In other areas of the world where EMV was in place long before it was introduced in the United States, counterfeit card fraud has been reduced significantly. Even the U.S. is now reporting a significant decrease in counterfeit card fraud. However, because ATMs and the point of sale no longer offer paths of least resistance for fraud, fraudsters have decided to carry out their attacks on a more vulnerable avenue: Card not present transactions.

CNP transactions lack the protection of EMV and other security measures, making this method an ideal target for these thieves. According to CardNotPresent.com, CNP fraud rose 79% in only three years following the EMV liability shift in the United Kingdom. In the U.S., CNP fraud rose 31% during the 2016 holiday season when chip cards were already in wide circulation.