Official figures of aggregated data show that by the end of 2015, the number of EMV payment cards in global circulation increased, year on year, by 1.4 billion to 4.8 billion.

In addition, EMVCo reports that 35.8% of all card-present transactions conducted globally between January and December 2015 used EMV chip technology, up from 32% for the same period in 2014.

The latest statistics highlight that EMV chip card adoption rates continued to increase in all the mature regions by the end of 2015:

– Europe Zone 1, EMV chip card adoption rate: 84.3% (up from 83.5% in 2014)

– Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, EMV chip card adoption rate: 71.7% (up from 59.5% in 2014)

– Africa and the Middle East EMV chip card adoption rate: 61.2% (up from 50.5% in 2014)

– Europe Zone 2 EMV chip card adoption rate: 52.3% (up from 40.4% in 2014)

– Asia Pacific EMV chip card adoption rate: 32.7% (up from 25.4% in 2014)

Europe Zone 1 maintained the highest percentage of EMV chip transactions, which accounted for 97.3% of card-present payments. 87.9% of card-present transactions were EMV chip-enabled in Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, while in Africa and the Middle East, usage accelerated to 87.1%.

In Europe Zone 2, EMV chip transactions reached 71.8% of card-present payments. Significant advancements were also made in Asia Pacific, with the percentage of card-present EMV chip transactions rising to 40.3%, marking a nearly 50% increase from 2014.

In the United States the EMV transition started to accelerate in 2015 and is continuing apace in the first half of 2016.

EMVCo executive committee current chair Mike Matan said: "The global adoption of the EMV Specifications is imperative to the development of a more secure and interoperable payments industry.

"EMVCo welcomes engagement with interested parties from across the payments ecosystem and supports a number of initiatives to enable the payments community to be actively involved in developing, enhancing and evolving future specifications."

EMVCo’s eighth annual EMV User Meeting, which takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark on 28-29 June 2016, provides a forum for payment industry stakeholders to gain insight into EMVCo’s current work priorities and development roadmap.