Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Money Girl Podcast. I'm your host Laura Adams.

My mission is to help 100 million people learn more about money and get inspired to live rich and love the journey.

I work as a speaker, spokesperson and content creator to advance financial education.

To learn more about me and download two free chapters from my award-winning book,

Moneygirls Smart Moves to Grow Rich,

visit Laura D Adams. Adams.com.

If you have credit cards, you've probably been receiving new ones in the mail that look a little different than the old ones. I'm looking at my new

Amex right now and it looks the same as the old one except it has a gold sort of box or

chip on the left side of the card. The reason for the makeover is that there's a major change

rolling out this year that requires every customer's card to have its own embedded microchip.

In this episode, I'll give an overview of the new chip technology,

tell you how it affects the way you can use your card, and whether it will really keep you

safe from fraud.

When I was doing research for this show, I was a little surprised to find out that the United States

has had the most credit card fraud in the world over the last five years. We only make up about a quarter of all

credit card sales but we're responsible for nearly 50% of fraud worldwide. Not good. One of the reasons we get hacked is because our credit card

processing technology is a dinosaur compared to other countries. The problem with old school magnetic stripe cards that we've been using

is that they contain static data that can be easily cloned.

Some of these huge retail scandals that we've seen like at Target have shined a really

bright light on our vulnerability and put a lot of pressure on the card industry to

make sweeping changes and fast.

Thankfully, the hammer is coming down this year

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