When it comes to card security, EMV chip technology is the leader of the pack. Protecting the confidential data stored on your card is important. Traditional cards with magnetic stripes are easily copied (skimmed) with inexpensive card readers called skimmers. However, cards featuring chip technology easily combat counterfeiting thanks to dynamic, ever changing data within the chip. On a magnetic stripe card, all the card data is stored in the magnetic stripe, which can be copied and recreated. The chip, on the other hand, securely stores the card data and is nearly impossible to recreate in a counterfeit card for use in-person. No personal information about your account is stored on the chip card, but it does generate a one-time use code for each transaction. That means that when a criminal breaches a merchant’s data and steals the card information from a past transaction, they are unable to use that information to recreate a card because that code can never be used again.