U.S. EMV And Restaurants

How are restaurants handling EMV payments?

More than likely, your restaurateur clients are in one of two camps when it comes to the U.S. transition to EMV. They’re either pushing for an EMV-enabled solution that fits in with their current processes or are clinging desperately to the notion that EMV may simply go away so they can avoid associated POS upgrade expenses/retraining. About eight years ago when Canada first began their migration to EMV, restaurant owners were by far the slowest of all merchant categories to make the move — many are still pushing back against Canadian EMV today. Why is that? Simple — restaurant processes are most impacted by the unique transaction flow for EMV, specifically the requirement that the card must be inserted into a level 3 EMV-certified device for the duration of the transaction. New Quick Chip (Visa) and M/Chip Fast (MasterCard) updates reduce the amount of time the card needs to sit in the device, but doesn’t solve the process problem for restaurants.