At a recent NACHA payments conference in San Diego, three major retailers claimed that the move to EMV will impose huge costs for a minimal reduction in fraud rates. And in a recent paper, a Kansas City Fed economist questioned the usefulness of a shift to EMV if issuers continued to require only a signature authorization.

According to an article by Finextra, one of the three — Wendy's — spoke out against EMV at the NACHA conference. The stores already accept PIN debit at the checkout and, according to Wendy's vice president and assistant treasurer, Gavin Waugh, the fraud rate was "hardly worth mentioning. Even if we pay the fraud liability, it's a whole lot cheaper than putting in terminals."

On the government front, Fed economist Richard Sullivan wrote that even though EMV might eliminate card counterfeiting, it would do be no better than magnetic stripe technology if a fraudster could still use a signature at the POS.

"[F]raudsters may put more effort into stealing computer-chip payment cards, knowing that they may be able to commit a few fraudulent transactions using a forged signature before issuers cut off use of the card," he wrote.

But Sullivan was more concerned that the U.S. has no comprehensive system for collecting statistics for fraud reporting, which he said was essential to enable the payment card industry to track and respond to new trends in fraud that might follow EMV migration. 

"Both regulators and the card payment industry could benefit from mechanisms to measure the levels and sources of fraud and to identify who pays the price — and how much is paid — for the nation's losses from payment card fraud," Sullivan wrote. 

Read more about EMV.