Many retailers are struggling with the cost and time involved with upgrading their payments infrastructure to accommodate for EMV cards and contactless payments, including Apple Pay. The challenge is not just replacing the payment terminals with a Verifone or Ingenico EMV capable terminal. The greater challenge is certifying/upgrading every link in the payments communication chain to be EMV compliant. The most critical link in this communication chain is the retail point-of-sale system. Some POS companies like MICROS (acquired by Oracle in 2014) have told the market that they are removing payments support from their systems given the constant demands of the changing payments landscape. POS companies like MICROS and Epicor are encouraging merchants to seek semi-integrated solutions that would remove the POS entirely from card payments.
Popular semi-integrated solutions include AJB FiPay, Verifone Point and Cayan’s Genius. These solutions receive a command from the POS to initiate a card payment and then the semi-integrated solution communicates directly with the payment terminal, eliminating for the need for credit card information to travel through the POS. As we have helped retail clients implement these solutions, they have saved significant time and money in their payments infrastructure upgrade.
During this upgrade process, retailers are taking time and evaluating other payment needs, including:
- adding encryption and tokenization
- removing legacy card data from existing systems
- consolidating multiple acquiring relationships
- initiating a merchant services RFP
- integrating retail and web channels to create omni-channel experience for consumers
- capital investment of
Let us know if you have any questions about these solutions or if we can help reduce your pain with EMV upgrades.
Lastly, here’s an article from digital transactions that speaks to retailers pain with EMV migration – http://digitaltransactions.net/news/story/5443
