It's not terminal yet... but it could be if we don't act now

Between now and June next year the industry has a major job ahead. All of the 5.1 eftpos terminals need to be changed to meet the new security standards being imposed by Visa and MasterCard. This is an international mandate and if we want to stay in the card business we have no choice.

So we don’t want to spend our energy debating ‘do we or don’t we?; we need to spend our energy focusing on how we do it.

There are tens of thousands of terminals to be swapped out. There is a whole raft of ownership models – store owned, leased with upgrades included, leased without upgrades and those leases, which extend beyond the June deadline.

Whatever the status, all of the 5.1s must go. The risk, and I don’t wish to be alarmist, is that your terminal could be ‘turned off’.

Ok, now I can hear you thinking, ‘We have got until June next year, I will look at this, say, April/May next year’.

Wrong! This kind of thinking will be terminal. Even if we ramp up the number of change-outs per week to the maximum right now (yes, I mean today), the capacity in the market is going to be stretched to cope. Leave it another six or nine months and there won’t be a chance. You might be one of the lucky ones and get serviced in May 2011. You might also be one of the unlucky ones and miss out.

Do you really want to be sitting in your store a few months out from the biggest event to hit New Zealand in years and have no ability to process credit card transactions?

What you need to do:

1. Check your current terminal. Go to www.areyouready.co.nz and type in your terminal ID. The response will indicate whether your terminal is compliant or not, - or talk to your eftpos provider.
2. If you identify that your terminal is 5.1 (or lower) you have an issue that needs to be addressed urgently. Contact your eftpos provider to identify the options open to you.
3. If you are signing up to a new lease, make sure the terminal is the most up-to-date. There should not be any 5.1s going into the market nor should there be any further 5.2s.
4. Whatever you do, act now. Don’t be one of those who end up in the middle of next year with a terminal condition.