Hospitality Tech Evolves To Incorporate Payment Changes

By Phillip Britt, contributing editor

VARs can add to value and revenue with additional POS features.

Payment card fraud, most notably the breach at Target in November of 2013, is one of a few factors driving restaurants, hotels, and other merchants to upgrade their point of sale (POS) systems from ones that accept magnetic stripe cards to EMV-compliant terminals that accept more secure chip-based payment cards (the standard in Europe and Canada). The newer cards are still in their embryonic stages with just some of the largest banks offering them. Discover is still in the test phase with its chip cards.

The payment card companies are requiring all terminals to be able to accept chip-based cards and meet other EMV compliance standards by Oct. 1, 2015. After that date the liability for fraudulent charges will shift from the card companies to the merchants for non-EMV transactions.

Some very small, independent restaurants which have only small tickets (charges), may choose not to upgrade their terminals because it would be much more costly than dealing with the occasional fraud. Most establishments don’t want the cost or the negative publicity that would come with any fraud.