credit card

If you’ve recently gotten a new credit card or have gotten an updated replacement for an old credit card, you might have noticed there is now a small chip on the face. This is the latest security technology in the U.S. to combat the growing concern of credit card fraud from counterfeiting, lost or stolen cards, and data security breaches. The credit card chip is basically a microchip, meant to be read by chip-enabled terminals that will (hopefully sooner than later) be more available at U.S. retailers. At these terminals, instead of swiping your plastic and using the old magnetic strip found on the back, you will instead insert your card so the chip can be read.

So what does this all mean? Why chip technology? Why are these cards safer? Are they actually safer?

Here’s a list of everything you might want to know about your new chipped credit cards.

1. What is a chip card?

A chip card is still a regular credit card just with upgraded security features. These newer cards are sometimes also called “smart cards” or IC cards because the data on the credit card is stored on integrated circuits rather than the magnetic stripes. But, in the U.S., new credit cards will still include magnetic strips since most retailers are not quite ready to support the new chip features.

This new security standard is called EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, the three companies that originally created the standard. The standard is now managed by EMVCo, a group with equally split control among Visa, MasterCard, JCB, American Express, China UnionPay, and Discover.