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The White House is about to ask federal agencies to use EMV microchip technology for its benefits prepaid cards, rather than cards with only magnetic strips, The Hill reported.

The report said the announcement will focus on the use of EMV on the prepaid cards, either alone or combined with magnetic strip technology.

Many banks and credit unions are moving forward with EMV, or chip-and-PIN technology, as an added safety feature for consumers' financial information. The Payments Security Task Force, of which NAFCU is a member, estimates that nine of the country's largest payment card issuers will have issued more than 575 million EMV payment cards by the end of 2015.

NAFCU is seeking legislative action to ensure all market participants bear their share of responsibility for data breaches. Many data breaches are the result of network intrusions occurring at the retailers' end – which EMV technology alone will not fix. Retailers are required to adopt EMV technology by Oct. 1, 2015.

NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger and Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel Carrie Hunt participated Wednesday in a steering committee call of the Payments Security Task Force. The task force is a diverse group of participants in the payments industry focused on EMV chip implementation, including ways to help reduce testing and implementation time, as well as driving a discussion on payments system security. During the call, participants discussed strategic plans for continuing work to ensure secure payments across all sectors, including merchants.

NAFCU was the first financial trade association to call for a national data security standard for retailers in the aftermath of the Target breach last year. The association is also pushing Congress to establish a bipartisan working group to develop legislative recommendations to address ongoing retailer breaches.