Walmart is suing Visa, claiming the payments network is preventing the retail chain from letting customers verify chip-enabled debit card transactions with personal identification numbers, or PINs.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail giant argues Visa forces the store to accept signatures when customers pay with their chip-enabled debit cards – a process that Walmart says creates “unacceptable risk” to customers.

“This suit is about protecting our customers’ bank accounts when they use their debit cards at Walmart,” a spokesman for the retailer said on Tuesday.

“We believe Visa’s position creates unacceptable risk to customers and its actions and rules are inconsistent with federal law,” said Walmart.

Furthermore, the Walmart stated chip-and-pin is currently the “only truly secure form of cardholder verification,” while also providing enhanced security to its customers.

However, Walmart’s dispute also involves money. The statement read:

“Visa has acknowledged in many other countries that chip-and-pin offer greater security. Visa nevertheless has demanded that we allow fraud-prone signature verification for debit transactions in our U.S. stores because Visa stands to make more money processing those transactions.”

Meanwhile, Visa has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

U.S. retailers were required to adopt payment terminals that were compatible with the chip-and-PIN technology last October to avoid facing liability in the event of consumer fraud.

Chip cards are inserted into payment terminals, instead of swiped, and create a unique code for each transaction, making it more difficult for fraudsters to produce counterfeit cards.

Via: tripwire