Dip

"Dipping" is the process of inserting an EMV chip card into a card reader during a transaction. It’s the equivalent of swiping a card with a magnetic stripe, but chip card transactions are considerably more secure.

Unlike traditional magnetic stripe cards, EMV chip cards are not easily read. The personal card data isn’t simply magnetically encoded. Rather, the chip embedded into the card is a tiny microprocessor that creates a unique, single-use code for each transaction.

Not only does this make data transmissions more secure, it also effectively prevents the criminal use of “skimmers.” These are illegally placed devices that crooks use to read magstripe data during a transaction. Chips are safer, but require the user to dip them into the reader.