Are You Out Of The Loop About EMV?

By The Business Solutions Network

Over the past few months, I've written quite a bit about the opportunity for POS VARs to sell payment processing services. Assuming you're already on board with this concept, your next step -- and ongoing challenge -- is to stay on top of the latest payments trends. One big trend that should be on your radar is EMV.

According to smartcardalliance.org, EMV (which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa) is an open-standard set of specifications for smart card payments and acceptance devices. The EMV specifications were developed to define a set of requirements to ensure interoperability between chip-based payment cards and terminals.

EMV chip cards contain embedded microprocessors that provide strong transaction security features and other application capabilities not possible with traditional magnetic stripe cards.

The backers of this initiative (Visa, MasterCard, and company) have enough clout to set a deadline of 2015 for merchants to be on EMV.

This means that as a retail IT provider, it's up to you to educate your merchants about this technology change, the impending deadline, and ways that you can help them get up to spec. All that sounds like a way for you to show your value-add, create a stickier relationship, and make some more money, eh?

EMV is definitely something for you to know and understand.