EMV. October 2015. Everyone’s talking about it. Here’s what you need to do to prepare your business for EMV:

 

Check your Hardware

+++The first step in all of this is to actually take a look at your hardware. Do you have simple stand-alone terminals? Are you a restaurant with a point of sale (POS) system? Are you a retail store with a point of sale (POS) system?

“The growth of smartphone use for mobile payments for purchases merely follows the continual evolution of the digital age. As more people begin to sign on to use a mobile payment service on their smartphones, retailers and others will need to follow suit to keep up with consumer demand.

For retailers and others, that means a new way of doing business and eventually adopting the new technology, he said. Even if small business owners are not users of Apple Pay to make purchases, they need to look at it to accept payments from customers.

Since they already need to update terminals to accept chip-based cards, they may as well consider accommodating Apple Pay as well.”

-Tom Trebilcock, PNC Mobile and Emerging Payments Division

+++If you’re having to upgrade your technology to accept EMV, it often makes sense to upgrade everything once, instead of having to upgrade everything again within 5 years for double the price.

Discuss your EMV options with your acquirer, processor, or POS provider

+++If you just use a basic terminal, whomever set up your store or restaurant with credit card processing is who you need to speak with next. They should be able to guide you through the process of getting hardware, and setting it up.

+++If you have a more customized POS (point of sale) solution, then you will need to check with them.

+++Here is a more complete guide on EMV, and here is a guide to merchant processing and understanding how it works. Both are excellent reads to better understand EMV and merchant processing.

Purchase the new hardware for your business

+++You will most likely do this through your merchant processor or POS (point of sale) provider.

+++Our current customers who have not already done so can always go through the process and work with an agent for free.

Certify your equipment

+++If you are using standalone basic terminals, check with your merchant processor regarding whether or not they have been certified. Otherwise, you will need to contact your POS (point of sale) system provider.

+++Here is a white paper on Level 3 Certification. If you are a POS on Cloud customer, as always, you can work with an agent free.

Train your employees

+++After your equipment is certified, here are a few key pointers to train your employees on:

• The EMV card should never leave the cardholder’s view
• EMV transaction amounts have to be entered before the card is put into the terminal
• Most EMV cards should be put into a terminal chip first, and chip side up.
• EMV cards have to remain inside the terminal for the entire length of the transaction. Otherwise it will be cancelled.

 

Conclusion

+++I hope that this article has in some way helped you, or made you more informed. If you like what you read, you can always contact one of our agents, or you can always contact me personally at raymond@posoncloud.com if you have any questions. We would love to hear from you, and our agents are standing by.

With regard,
Post by Raymond Tri