EMV Smart Cards: Legal Status and Fraud-Related Liability

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-785-9_7How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Banking Fraud; EMV standard; Gross Negligence; Liability-Shift; Risk Bearing

Abstract

This study highlights the legal validity of smart chip payment cards operating under the EMV standard, which is no longer merely a technological innovation but has become a pivotal shift in how liability and evidence are handled in bank transactions. The technological features EMV cards provide — such as encryption, dynamic authentication, and data verification — offer stronger security and greater evidentiary value than those of traditional magnetic stripe cards. However, the rise of sophisticated cyber fraud—especially phishing—has revealed the limitations of technical safeguards alone, prompting renewed legal debates over the duties and liabilities of banks, cardholders, and merchants, especially in the absence of clear legislation that precisely defines the concept of “gross negligence” and specifies the obligations of banks in addressing cyber risks. The research adopts a descriptive method to clarify the concept of EMV cards and an analytical method to examine legal systems and judicial rulings to determine liabilities among parties and the legal bases on which these liabilities are founded. This study concludes that conventional liability is inadequate in today’s digital landscape and advocates for integrating modern legal principles, such as Risk Bearing and the Liability-Shift rule.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Maisoon Al-Masri
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/07
TI  - EMV Smart Cards: Legal Status and Fraud-Related Liability
BT  - Proceedings of the UUM 13th International Legal Conference 2025 (UUMILC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 90
EP  - 106
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-785-9_7
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-785-9_7
ID  - Al-Masri2026
ER  -