We’re now well into 2017 and EMV terminals have been around over a year.
As of the deadline of October 2015, merchants not able to process EMV transactions now own the liability for fraudulent charges.
In the world of point-of-sale providers, they were a bit slow on making EMV readily available to merchants. Delays caused by POS software providers struggling to implement the right certifications required by EMV is the reason it took so long to become available to restaurant and bars.
Since every single type of credit card was tested, it meant a lot of time and energy to make the switch in the software.
But now it’s much more widely available for point-of-sale systems, and your restaurant or bar should be able to find an EMV terminal, and software upgrade to make the switch and protect yourself from fraud.
We will stand by our original statement when EMV first came out, and that was that it’s highly unlikely that you are going to experience counterfeit credit cards. Remember, counterfeit cards are the only time EMV protects merchants.
Counterfeit cards are a higher risk for big retailers and electronic stores. While it’s highly unlikely that a restaurant would experience a case of fraud from a fake card, it’s still a wise decision to look at how many chargebacks you get as a merchant.
If you do not have many instances of counterfeit fraud, you may not need to update to EMV.
While the U.S expects to fully switch to EMV processing over the next 10 years, if you’re not experiencing high volumes of chargebacks of counterfeit cards, you may just hold off on EMV.
The National Restaurant Association has the following recommendation for merchants who are weighing the cost of upgrading to EMV. “Even if you experience fraud, the cost of the chargeback may be far less than the cost of installing a new EMV reader, or fleet of readers. As you look at the expense of buying and installing EMV readers, consider whether you’re better offer investing in new technology that offers stronger protections, such as encryption and tokenization” (National Restaurant Association).
If you’re not sure about the cost, talk to your point-of-sale provider and see the cost to upgrade. And, if you can, look to see if your POS provider provides additional software protections, such as tokenization and encryption. Encryption is probably the strongest way to protect your customers' information, as point-to-point encryption is hard to compromise, and useless to hackers if a data breach happens.
Contact us here and see what point-of-sale protections your point-of-sale system could acquire.
