In news that should be surprising to nobody, Target has announced that they would be reissuing all of REDcard’s as Chip & PIN cards. These cards will also be reissued with MasterCard as the payment processor instead of VISA. This is reported to be happening sometime next year. Target were responsible for a massive data breach late in 2013 in which consumers data was accessed. They were required to offer free credit monitoring to all those affected, which was offered by Experian (no longer available for sign up. Although similar credit monitoring can also be accessed via Credit Sesame for free).
Target has previously announced that they are in the process of upgrading their registers to accept chip & PIN enabled cards, with sixty to seventy stores per week having the upgraded technology added. They’ve pledged to have all of their registers updated by September, 2014.
This is good news, chip & PIN technology has been proven to greatly reduce the amount of credit card fraud that occurs. Target joins Chase who have also pledged to convert to chip & PIN cards (sometime in 2o14). More and more countries in Australiasia and Europe are converting to chip & PIN only transactions for their residents to help prevent fraud (Australia will be only chip & PIN starting August 1st, 2014).