Law360, New York (October 26, 2015, 11:36 AM EDT) -- On Oct. 1, 2015, the major payment card companies instituted the EMV liability shift, named after its originators, the former Europay International, Mastercard Inc. and Visa Inc., in an effort to incentivize card issuers and merchants to migrate to using payment cards with embedded chips ("chip cards") according to the EMV standard. This shift is better characterized as an allocation of liability of counterfeit fraud to whichever party in a transaction has not conformed to the EMV standard. Card issuers can conform by issuing compliant chip cards and merchants can conform by implementing terminals that accept chip cards. About three weeks have passed since the shift was instituted and many companies have not become EMV compliant, meaning they are subject to an immediate increase in risk for fraud liability. Whether you work for a company, are a private equity fund manager assessing risk for your portfolio companies or are brokering a deal that involves merchants or card issuer companies, these five facts will help you assess the impact of the EMV liability shift....