As the world trembles with the approach of the coming EMV compliance deadline, fueling stations have received a temporary reprieve. The EMV compliance deadline for most businesses is October 1, 2017. That means that businesses must be able to accept credit cards with the new EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chips. Retail establishments unable to accept the chip readers will be responsible for fraudulent purchases made in their stores.
EMV Compliance
EMV compliance is a way for credit card companies to shift responsibility to retailers for fraudulent purchases made with cloned or faked credit cards. Visa claims that the results of the 1.7 million merchants currently using EMV chip readers is a 43 percent reduction of fraudulent or counterfeit credit card purchases. But it hasn’t come cheaply for all retail environments. Many retailers have had to completely overhaul their POS (point of sale) systems to accept these new cards.
Fueling stations that offer the pay at the pump feature have been particularly hard hit. Which is why they’ve been offered a temporary reprieve from Visa and MasterCard who recently announced that they would be pushing back compliance requirements from October of 2017 until October 2020.
While that is certainly cause for celebration, fuel retailers do not need to sit idly back during this time. One of the reasons fueling stations offering “pay at the pump” features have been given this impressive reprieve is the cost involved in upgrading fueling pumps to accommodate chip readers can easily add up to $20,000 per pump and an estimated four billion dollars industry wide. Fur multi-pump stations and small businesses, those costs can be staggering.
Enter the Clover Station POS, which offers the Fuel App. Fuel for Clover is a multi-function system that allows fueling pumps to communicate with the store registers when making sales. This eliminates the need for costly pump installations and upgrades that are quite capable of putting smaller fueling stations out of business – or at least out of the “pay at the pump” business.
Clover Station and Clover Mini, with the power of the Fuel app can help you accept all forms of payment, including:
- Apple Pay
- Cash
- Credit Cards (EMV compliant chip cards, too)
- Debit Cards
- EBT Cards
- Fleet Cards
Honestly, EMV compliance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to benefits of using Clover as the Smart POS decision for your business. Clover offers versatility in how you accept payments – and even where you can accept them, frees up valuable counterspace, includes many free tools and apps that help you build your business, and more. It even offers cloud-based technology so you can access sales reports and other information remotely from a mobile phone, tablet, or PC or in store.
Clover has more to offer than other POS Providers
The other thing Clover has to offer that other POS providers lack is the fully functioning, state-of-the-art app center filled with tools to help your build your business bigger and better than before, like the Fuel App, which will help fueling stations of all sizes and budgets meet the need for EMV compliance without shelling out not-so-small fortunes to do so.
NerdWallet makes a couple of excellent points about finding the right solution to work with your business when trying to become EMV compliant. First, some businesses are more susceptible to fraud than others. If your business is uncommon and only handles small transactions, you have less to lose by failing to make the upgrades in time. Second, the consequence for failing to update isn’t jail time. It means you’re putting your money on the line and trusting in your customers to do the right thing.
There are risks involved in failing to become chip compliant for the deadline and some believe that fueling stations are hot targets for certain types of credit card fraud. Simply put, EMV compliance offers protections for gas stations and other businesses against counterfeit credit cards. You must decide, for the sake of your business, if you are willing to take the risk and accept the financial consequences when customers make fraudulent purchases at your pumps.
How big is the problem of credit card fraud? According to the Chicago Tribune, the collective amount of chargebacks related to fraudulent credit card purchases is somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars.
POS compliance and apps, like Fuel, are enabling fueling businesses the opportunity to save an incredible amount of money while meeting all the requirements for EMV compliance.
When you work with the Clover Station family of products, though, you’re getting much more in the transition to improve your record keeping, help you grow your business, manage information, and improve sales. The powerful combination of Fuel and Clover is a winner for any business that currently offers pay-at-the-pump convenience.
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