EMV stands for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa, which are the three companies that created a technical standard for smart payment cards and for payment terminals and automated teller machines that can accept them. EMV cards store cardholder information on a metallic chip instead of in a magnetic stripe, making them more secure than stripe-only cards. EMV technology is overseen by an organization called EMVCo, which includes among its members major credit card companies like Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, JCB, and UnionPay.

EMV chips, which come standard in many new credit and debit cards, supplant the magnetic stripe on the back of the card with a more secure data-storage technology. When a customer inserts or taps the payment card, the terminal communicates with the card issuers system for authentication, and a single-use transaction code is issued. One of the main benefits of EMV chip technology is protecting cardholders credit card information. These chips create a one-time-use code when inserted into an EMV reader, using that code to process a payment instead of the card number printed on the card. When you make a purchase via EMV card, the merchant never receives or transmits your actual card number, making it much more difficult for malicious actors to counterfeit your card.

EMV compliance testing has two levels: EMV Level 1, which covers physical, electrical, and transport level interfaces, and EMV Level 2, which covers payment application selection and credit financial transaction processing. The first EMV standard came into view in 1995 as EMV 2.0, and the standard has since been upgraded to EMV 4.3 in November 2011. EMV technology is still relatively new, although it has already become the standard for secure card payments.