Small businesses often feel inundated by the many regulatory and security compliances associated with accepting payments. Upgrading to EMV chip terminals seems like just another task to add to the to-do list.
This begs the question for many small businesses: Are EMV chip terminals actually needed? The short answer is a resounding YES. We’ll unpack the benefits and explain how EMV is helpful for small business who need to protect their company and revenue.
Why Small Businesses Must be EMV Compliant
Technically, small businesses could choose to not upgrade their payment terminals to accept EMV chip cards. Those businesses, however, open themselves up to costly fines, liability and the risk of losing customer trust. Not being EMV compliant leaves small businesses vulnerable to losing big when a data breach occurs following the October 2015 EMV liability shift that moved the burden from card networks to business in many instances.
The bottom line: each day you go without EMV protection leaves you and your customers at risk. Traditional cards have a magnetic stripe that is swiped through a card reader. The data stored on that black stripe never changes, making it relatively easy to steal. If a hacker obtains the information on the magnetic stripe, he can then duplicate it as many times as he wants.
With EMV chip cards, the data is tokenized, which means it constantly changes. The chip on the card is actually a computer chip that creates a new transaction code every time a purchase is made. The code can only be used once, so even if a hacker obtains it, additional transactions can’t be made.
The EMV liability shift is inching toward its third year, so there isn’t any leeway for business who haven’t made the switch. Merchants are responsible for upgrading their credit card processing equipment to accept chip cards. But the transition to EMV doesn’t have to be so complicated.
What is EMV and Why it Benefits Small Businesses
EMV is the global standard for credit and debit card payments. Every transaction is encrypted and allows consumers to securely transact, while the business’ payment terminal can quickly and easily authenticate the card and the cardholder. Becoming EMV compliant reduces unnecessary liability associated with payment card fraud, and protects your customers’ cardholder data. This keeps your business potentially safe from being caught in a massive breach — and keeps your customers happy knowing their payment data is safe when they shop with your business. Breaches can cripple your business’ bottom line, increase customer churn and bring costly and complicated regulatory issues with your credit card issuers and processors.
Core Benefits of EMV for Small Businesses
The benefits of upgrading to an EMV chip card terminal far outweigh the short-term costs needed to become compliant. Relying on an EMV-enabled terminal to protect your customer’s payment dat also protect your profits. An EMV chip card payment processing system also comes equipped with a robust security system — including E2E tokenization capabilities to protect sensitive data across all your payment channels.
Beyond the liability requirements, EMV credit card processing terminals provide:
- Better security and EMV features: Secures data and application management for highly-secured electronic transactions. Provides end-to-end encryption (E2EE) solutions for reduced PCI DSS scope and reduces counterfeit card fraud.
- More payment options: In addition to accepting EMV, magstripe and NFC/contactless payments, merchants can support new technologies such as NFC, loyalty features, couponing, wallets and QR codes. EMV-enabled checkout solutions can also increase revenue through acceptance of international cards and enable cardholders to use secure EMV payment cards globally.
- Faster, more secure checkouts: The right payments processing partner will provide you with a robust and optimized checkout terminal solution that is easy to handle, and provides convenient interactions with your customers. Transactions are fast, accurate and safe.
- Seamless Integration: With an easy digital connection, the right payment processing partner should provide a plug-and-play system that enables a single multipoint mono connector cable for seamless integration.
If you’re a small business that hasn’t made the EMV switch, don’t fret. That’s why we exist — to take the burden off your shoulders and get you upgraded without any downtime. We provide a support team that’s available at your side 24/7 and have solutions that can seamlessly be integrated into your existing payments process. From EMV terminals to full POS solutions, our solutions are EMV and NFC capable. Your top concern is your customers, and we’re here to help you transition to better EMV credit card processing.
Visit www.goemerchant.com/emv to get started today!
