From last few decades, people prefer the use of plastic cards as it is considered as one of the safest modes of payment. But, on the contrary of it the rise of credit card frauds is observed by card payment industry to avoid frauds the industry regularly works towards the development of the safest card use solutions to keep card information secure.
New EMV credit cards are one of the major developments in card technology. For security concerns, EMV cards are called as chip cards that store information into integrated circuits rather than in magnetic stripe of the cards. This development calls for upgrade of card acceptance systems.
But, why a business should shift to this new technology for card acceptance? The EMV technology shift as it will keep the transactions safe from counterfeit frauds. If the business does not keep their systems compliant to latest technology it will be liable for the counterfeit frauds and there is no remedy to avoid it.
Now, how to get a POS terminal that can accept chip-based credit card? Here are few points that will help you to understand the whole procedure for getting an EMV-friendly Point-Of-Sale:
1. Check your requirements:
You should make a list of all software and hardware that are directly or indirectly connected to your existing point of sale terminal.
This will help you to know that if you need to upgrade just your existing terminal or you will need to upgrade all the things that are currently in use for your business.
2 . Know the options that are available:
For this you need to discuss the options with Merchant Acquirer that will help you to connect with the payment processor they work with, these payment processors will guide you to the best solution that will fit in your business.
If your business uses highly connected software then your Independent Software Vendor (ISV) with payment processor will play a pivotal role in choosing the best terminal.
3. Purchase the terminal:
Now, this is an important decision as this needs expert’s advice of purchasing the terminal. There are two terminals exist chip-and-signature and the other one is chip-and-PIN. While the Chip-and-Signature looks easier and good through which authentication is obtained from a signature. But, at the same time Chip-and-PIN terminal will accept the payment authorization by PIN code.
From above options, the Chip-and-PIN is considered as the best credit card terminal option as it will help you to get authorization from the cardholder by card’s PIN code and also enables you to accept card payments from international cards.
4.Getting the certification for the terminal:
The answer for the question whether a merchant needs to get the certification for using new card acceptance terminal or not?
Well, the answer is yes, a Level 3 certification by EMVco and Card brands is required to use payment card terminal. For all types of businesses, this certification is required.
The certification can be achieved with the help of payment processor as they will able to guide you about the exact requirement that is needed to be fulfilled before applying for the certification.
5. Employees should be able to use the new terminal effectively:
After getting the latest technology-enabled terminal and certification, you need to train your employees about how to use the latest terminal, the procedure is not really tough, yet it’s new so you need to give them a small training session about the use and importance of the terminal. Here are the steps to use the terminal:
- The amount must be entered in the terminal before inserting the card into the machine.
- While inserting the card into the machine the chip-side should up, i.e. the chip should be dipped into the machine.
- After inserting the card, it should not be taken out of the machine until the payment authorization is obtained.
6 . Share options with your customers:
Sharing information about the importance of EMV is the best thing you can do as it will help you to connect with your customers and also will help you to gain reliability.