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About Chip & PIN
Chip & PIN in Hospitality
The success of Chip & PIN and the most positive aspects of it were initially seen in retail. The introduction of Chip & PIN into the Hospitality environment has presented many more challenges than it did in retail.
The Challenges:
EPOS, Tabs, Elongated Transactions, Walkouts
The hospitality industry has wanted to deploy the technology, but it has had difficulty doing so, because of the lack of understanding that prevailed, of the particular requirements of the hospitality industry, in terms of the elongated transaction that occurs in hospitality. Initially the card industry did not understand the fine details of how an elongated payment in hospitality was handled. However, since November 2003 the card industry has worked hard to understand the issues and has worked through the individual transaction types to understand the requirements and has now incorporated the special requirements for hospitality in the APACS 70 standard. Not all the solutions found are absolutely perfect in all environments, but now provide the framework for solutions to be developed and deployed.
Unfortunately some of the suppliers of the solutions for hospitality have hidden behind the fact that the original requirements laid down for Chip and PIN were not totally suitable for hospitality. Instead of stepping up to the line and working through with the card industry, the areas they knew they would have difficulty applying Chip & PIN requirements to, they have just told their customers that they could not do anything till the requirements were clarified. In the meantime the hospitality merchants have been totally exposed to liability shift and unable to implement solutions.
So where the processing of card payments is integrated with the EPOS software, hospitality groups have had to delay implementing Chip & PIN while they initially awaited clarification of suitable processes. Now they are delayed while they wait for their suppliers to implement Chip & PIN in the hospitality solutions. Only one hospitality solution with integrated card technology was approved up to mid 2005. Had it wanted to, the hospitality industry could not deploy the technology and are now frustrated at the delays in solutions becoming available from the suppliers.