A criminal presenting a cloned credit card embedded with a fake chip will
still have the stolen account information stored on the card’s magnetic strip.
If the point-of-sale terminal can’t read the chip after three tries, a fallback
feature will ask the user to swipe the card instead. That fallback feature
cannot be switched off.
The EMV chip is designed to protect the retailer against fraudulent charges
by verifying the card was physically present during the transaction. But if the
chip isn’t read, the merchant—not the bank—will be on the hook for any fraud.
