What is a chip/EMV/smart card?

Chip cards provide a higher degree of security due to the chip which uses several measures to create a complex level of security making a chip card difficult to copy or counterfeit. International market migrations to EMV chip have proven the value of chip cards at reducing counterfeit fraud. Because of their complexity and use of dynamic transaction data, chip cards make counterfeit fraud a near impossibility. Adding these dynamic elements to transactions makes account data less attractive to steal and adds greater security to the payment system.