Fraudsters rack up $8.6 billion in fraudulent charges every year in the U.S. alone.
"Everyone has had some instance of compromising on their card whether it was a merchant or some online fraud," said Sharon Breshears, a sales person at Bob Jones Shoes.
That's why Bob Jones Shoes got ahead of the fraudsters by installing EMV - or Europay, Mastercard, Visa - machines in their downtown Kansas City shoe store.
MORE: What You Need To Know About Those New EMV Credit Cards
"You need it," she said. "There's so much fraud out there that it is really important to do what you can to protect people's information. And why wouldn't you? You want your customers to be able to trust you and that their information is going to be secure."
The Better Business Bureau of Greater Kansas City explained that what separates the chip from the magnetic strip is that the chip generates a unique code.
"The chip on the card, it makes it so every transaction has a different code assigned to it," said Aaron Reese of the Better Business Bureau of Greater Kansas City. "It's an encryption so it makes it so each individual transaction is unique, so even if a fraudster gets a hold of that information, it's useless for the next transaction."
Right now credit card fraud falls to the feet to credit card companies. Starting Oct. 1, the liability for fraud will shift to the business if it doesn't support EMV technology.
"Even though the chances of it happening to your business are very low, it's a 100 percent chance this is going to happen to some business that doesn't switch over," said Reese.
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Terra Hall can be reached at terra.hall@kshb.com.
You can also follow her on Twitter.
