PRINCETON, N.J. & SOUTHLAKE, Texas – Heartland Payment Systems and Pinnacle Corporation announced the first integrated point-of-sale (POS) system for convenience and fuel retailers that is EMV compliant.
Heartland and Pinnacle’s Palm POS system provides convenience and fuel retailers with the highest level of protection available against card-present data fraud and will accept EMV chip-cards for indoor and contact transactions.
Lynch Oil of Burley, Idaho, is upgrading its POS system to accept EMV payments with the help of Heartland and Pinnacle. When completed, the company will be the first fuel retailer to use the EMV POS system at six Mr. Gas locations in southern Idaho.
To be compliant with payment network EMV requirements, retailers were encouraged to upgrade indoor POS software and hardware by October 2015 and outdoor pay-at-the-pump equipment by October 2017. EMV compliance is not a U.S. government mandate, and it is up to retailers to implement EMV-enabled terminals. However, retailers who decide to implement EMV technology will avoid liability for counterfeit card-present data fraud while boosting consumer confidence.
“I am pleased that the industry is finally seeing an implementable certification to meet the compliance date. We have lots of retailers who have made, and continue to make, significant investments in equipment upgrades, but cannot avoid the liability shift due to lack of certification,” said Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus. “The fact that our industry has but one fully-certified solution one month after indoor liability shift and 23 months before automated fuel dispensers shift, shows how inadequately implementation was planned for our market. Despite the late specifications and convoluted certification process, it is great to see how Conexxus members like Pinnacle and Heartland are pushing through it all to deliver solutions.”
Drew Mize, chief operating officer at Pinnacle, added: “EMV has been a tough road for every technology supplier in our space and it’s far from over, but to be the first retail convenience specific point-of-sale platform to achieve a fully integrated EMV certification from the card brands demonstrates our nimbleness and ability to keep our clients on the leading edge competitively, whether that’s adding to the top-line or reducing potential fraud liability expenses.”
The Heartland and Pinnacle Palm POS solution has been EMV certified by American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa. Cardholders can now use their EMV credit cards at appropriate petro retailers equipped with Heartland and the Pinnacle Palm POS solution. The solution is available today for convenience and fuel retailers.