Navigating EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) and mobile payment is top of mind for retailers in 2017.
The National Retail Federation (NRF)’s “State of Retail Payments 2016” study found the top payments priorities for retailers all centered around EMV, including EMV implementation (76%), chargebacks (46%) and tokenization/encryption (37%).
“Retailers have seen a surge in chargebacks related to EMV because of the change in liability rules. They have ramped up efforts to put tokenization/encryption in place because the new EMV cards do neither,” said J. Craig Shearman, NRF’s vice president for government affairs public relations.
Boston Retail Partners’ (BRP) “2016 POS Survey” found 85% of retailers surveyed indicated that unified commerce is also a top priority. Unified commerce is a single commerce platform connecting mobile, web and store in real time.
“Retail is moving toward a ‘seamless experience’ where customers see the same products, pricing, etc. in-store, online and on mobile,” Shearman said. “They can buy online and pickup in store, return items bought online, use online or apps to locate stores, etc. The technology that makes that happen is a top priority.”
MOBILE MATTERS
The move toward mobile payment across channels continues. In January, Target announced plans to launch its own mobile payment service this year. Amazon in December began testing “Amazon Go,” where customers pay via mobile phone just by walking past a sensor with products.
Russell Gibson, manager marketing technical services for Sinclair Oil Corp. based in Salt Lake City said Sinclair has rolled its mobile payment app out to 63 of its 1,300 stores. The app uses geo-fencing to pinpoint the customer’s location to direct them to the nearest station or locate their pump. In the app, the customer selects their pump number and enters a self-selected PIN into the dispenser to dual authenticate themselves and activate the dispenser.
The biggest challenge to expanding the mobile payment option has been waiting for the point-of-sale (POS) manufacturers to update their systems with the proper Conexxus API for Sinclair’s provider, P97 Networks. “Our rollout will be by POS type. Fiscal is about 90% rolled out, and I strongly suspect Verifone Commander/Ruby Ci will be next,” Gibson said.
When it comes to electronic payments, Gibson said security and ease of use continue to be top concerns for customers.
EMV WOES
Sinclair is also rolling out EMV by POS manufacturer. “To date, I am not aware of any suppliers that have released to production their EMV software,” he said. “In order to run EMV, a merchant must have the latest hardware. Attempting to fix or add EMV to older models just is not effective.”
“The idea that retailers were slow to implement EMV was banking industry spin intended to cover up the problems with EMV. Millions of chip readers sitting next to cash registers but only being used to swipe cards was evidence retailers had done their part and it was banks that had dropped the ball,” Shearman said. He noted thousands of retailers installed equipment but waited months to get certified by the card industry.