It’s important for small business owners to lessen the number of steps and amount of effort it takes to get paid. Along the way the check could get lost in the mail or your customer may forget to pay you altogether. And even when they follow all the correct steps it can take weeks, or months, for those funds to hit your bank account. Often, your customer has to jump through hoops to pay you. Getting paid is one of the biggest challenges faced by small businesses. During that authentication process, the chip card has to be inserted into the device for the entire transaction, which involves back and forth communication. EMV transactions will take longer than traditional magnetic stripe cards, because the EMV device reads the microchip to help authenticate that the credit card is valid.

Although it is optional, EMV will help protect your business by providing increased fraud protection from counterfeit, lost or stolen cards, because the embedded chip is more secure than the traditional magnetic stripe technology. EMV compliance is not a law and it is up to each business to decide if upgrading to EMV card readers is right for them. More information is available in this link.

If you only key in credit card data instead of swiping cards, you will not be affected by the EMV liability shift, but you should always be aware of the ways to prevent fraud when processing online or phone transactions.

If you plan on processing card present transactions in the future, you may consider ordering an EMV card reader to reduce your liability for counterfeit or stolen EMV/chip cards.

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