Dive Brief:

• The clunky nature of using new, more secure chip-embedded credit cards will wreak havoc with holiday sales in stores, says Wal-Mart senior director of payment services John Drechny, who has worked to transition the retailer to the new EMV cards. 

• The timing of the requirement for retailers to update their point of sales systems will slow down checkout times and force many shoppers to opt for cards without the chips. “We’re forcing anarchy” on payments, Drechny said Monday during a panel discussion at the Money20/20 payments conference in Las Vegas, Re/Code reports.

• The situation could also bring more shoppers to use mobile payment systems like Apple Pay or Android Pay, some experts have told Retail Dive.

Dive Insight:

Perhaps the retailers that are lagging behind the Oct. 1 deadline to have EMV POS systems in place are hoping to wait out the holiday rush. Just 58% of retailers surveyed last month by Randstad Technologies were on their way to meet the deadline to be able to accept new chip-enabled credit cards. Perhaps more alarming, 42% said they either did not have plans to make the deadline or weren’t aware of plans to do so. 

But many banks have also failed to get those more secure cards into consumers’ wallets, according to research released by CreditCard.com. Just 40% of consumers, mostly in higher income brackets, have received the cards, the survey found. 

Retailers are seeing an increase in mobile shopping that could also translate to more payments by mobile in stores.

“Apple Pay has seen traction because it is both clearly strong enough for the task and because it is exceedingly easy to use,” Nicko van Someren, CTO of Good Technology, told Retail Dive earlier this year. “As long as new mobile systems meet or exceed the security of the cards that they might replace, the barrier to adoption is always going to be whether using your mobile device can be made easier than grabbing your ‘top of wallet’ card.”