Sams Club Introduces Chip-Enabled Credit Card Security

Sam’s Club is the first major American retailer to use chip-enabled credit card security technology.

The store will launch, in partnership with MasterCard, a new store credit card June 23, and each of those credit cards will have an embedded chip that makes the card more difficult to duplicate, according to a press release from Sam’s Club owner and operator Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Unlike magnetic stripes, chip cards use a onetime code to move data between the chip and a retailer’s register, making the data useless to anyone but the parties involved in that transaction.

The technology has been widely used in Europe for years, and the move comes in the wake of several large-scale data breaches in the retail world in America.

 “MasterCard has taken a strong stance on the need for the U.S. market to make the transition to chip-enabled credit cards for the benefit of cardholders and merchants alike,” MasterCard, North America president Chris McWilton said in the press release. “This move by Sam’s Club makes them a trailblazer in getting chip cards in the hands of businesses and consumers and leading the push toward a safer and more secure customer experience. This will no doubt help drive chip-enabled technology forward here in the U.S. as it gains more traction.”