NEW YORK - Visa says its improving its smart chip-embedded cards, which have been the source of grumbling from businesses and customers forced to wait for transactions to go through.

The company said Tuesday that Quick Chip for EMV will let customers dip and remove cards, usually in two seconds or less, without waiting for purchases to be finalized.

Though the wait can be just seconds, in today's economy of swipes and scans, the cards have been a nuisance for high traffic retailers, for example, a coffee shop during the morning rush.

The cards are more secure than those with magnetic strips because the chip assigns a unique code to each transaction.

Visa Inc. said that more than 265 million of its credit and debit chip cards have been issued to date.