Training and product awareness at both the business and the employee level is crucial to a successful implementation. As EMV acceptance is very different than the traditional magstripe (the card is inserted into the terminal as opposed to swiped, for example), it is imperative that everyone is familiar with the new requirements to make the customer experience as smooth as Point Of Salesible.
Don’t wait to migrate. You may begin to feel the pressure once the EMV card migration starts to reach its critical mass – with issuing banks beginning to issue chip cards to new and existing customers. Businesses that have not already migrated to EMV may consequently have to answer to their customers as to why they have to continue to swipe their new chip cards – especially when the market presents chip technology as the safer way to pay. Don’t wait until the last minute to migrate your business.
Get a business plan together even before implementation begins. As equipment upgrades have the potential to be both costly and time consuming, it’s best to get started early. Figure out how much it’s going to cost, how long it’s going to take and plan accordingly. Also, when planning on how to update your systems to support this change, you will want to take a hard look at the cost vs. benefits of EMV. In some cases, fraud prevention alone may not deliver an acceptable ROI for effort required to implement this technology. With that, you will want to achieve other benefits when displacing your existing hardware or software solutions (e.g. update network connectivity, build out support for a loyalty or gift card program, include ability to accept contactless / mobile payment transactions, etc…).