Number of EMV Chip Payment Cards in Global Circulation Increases to 4.8 Billion

Global technical body EMVCo today reports solid growth in the worldwide adoption of EMV chip technology.

Official figures of collected data suggest that by the end of 2015, the number of EMV payment cards in global circulation increased, year on year, by 1.4 billion to 4.8 billion.

Additionally, EMVCo reported that 35.8 percent of all card-present transactions recorded globally between January and December 2-15 used, in some form, EMV chip technology. This stat is up 32 percent for the same period in 2014.

The layout for all mature regions by the end of 2015 shakes out like this:

• Europe Zone 1, EMV chip card adoption rate: 84.3% (up from 83.5% in 2014)
• Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, EMV chip card adoption rate: 71.7% (up from 59.5% in 2014)
• Africa and the Middle East EMV chip card adoption rate: 61.2% (up from 50.5% in 2014)
• Europe Zone 2 EMV chip card adoption rate: 52.3% (up from 40.4% in 2014)
• Asia Pacific EMV chip card adoption rate: 32.7% (up from 25.4% in 2014)

“The global adoption of the EMV Specifications is imperative to the development of a more secure and interoperable payments industry,” comments Mike Matan, current Chair of the EMVCo Executive Committee. “EMVCo welcomes engagement with interested parties from across the payments ecosystem and supports a number of initiatives to enable the payments community to be actively involved in developing, enhancing and evolving future specifications.”

If you would like to dig deeper through this data accumulated by EMVCo, read more here.