Majority of small business owners are unaware of the upcoming EMV liability shift, scheduled to be effective from 1 October 2015, according to the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index.

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The EMV liability shift mandates any card issuer or merchant, not supporting EMV chip card technology, to take liability of any fraudulent point-of-sale (PoS) card transactions.

The survey finds that less than 49% of small business owners accepting point-of-sale card payments are aware of the October EMV liability shift.

Out of the owners accepting PoS card payments, 31% have said that their current credit card processing system accepts chip-enabled cards.

On being asked about their plan to upgrade PoS credit card terminals to accept EMV chip cards, 29% of business owners agreed that they plan to make the change before the October deadline.

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Thirty four percent of business owners said that they plan to make the upgrade in the future after October, while 21% said that they never intend to do so.

Citing reasons on not upgrading their terminals before October, 48% opined that doing so would not impact their business, 46% said that they do not want to pay for the costs linked to upgrading, while 41% were not concerned about the liability shift in the case of fraud.

The survey also revealed that business owners also are divided about whether the liability shift will reduce fraud for businesses, the main objective of EMV chip-enabled cards. Forty-two percent feel it will improve protection from fraud, and 42% feel it will not improve protection from fraud.