News

PCI Compliance

What Is PCI Compliance And Should Merchants Be Concerned About It?

Find the hard facts as to what needs to be done Requirements and Security Assessment Procedures

PIN pads are at risk.

Pin pad theft warning from West Vancouver police

268 bank accounts in Victoria drained in 1 week in latest scam

These are just a few articles. What can you do about it? The best prevention a retailer can provide for their customer is to lock it down. Have a look at our PIN pad brackets.

Smart cards? WHAT is going on?

Technically, what they are called is an EMV card. EMV = Europay, MasterCard, and Visa. Complete point of sale (POS) conversion is required by the end of 2015. Visa Canada has implemented a liability shift that takes effect in October 2010. Effective October, 2010, the liability for any fraudulent transaction that would have been prevented by chip technology will fall on the party that has not yet migrated to chip. If you are a merchant, that probably means you!

Read about it at EMV Canada

If your POS system is interfaced then when will it be working?

There are several things that need to come together before this new technology is going to be fully operational. There are three basic factors on processing EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). Primarily what you see is your point of sale software Maitre'd or perhaps L-POS but this is actually the smallest part of it and they have far less control over it than you think. At the other end we have what we call the processor. Examples of processors are Moneris, Paymentech, and Mercury Systems. Between the POS software and the processor is what we call the middleware. Examples of middleware are Datacap Net e-pay, Tender Retail, and the new upcoming Precidia. What has to happen first is the middleware applications must first write and then approve the interface between their middleware, the PIN pad, and the processor. That approval processes is complicated and involves all individual aspects of the EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa to give its rubber stamp of approval. Making this process even more difficult, the technology in protocals and PIN pad hardware are in a constant change and development while the processors settle on their final release making it yet more difficult for the interfaces to be completed. After this is all approved, then the new protocols and new hardware can be passed on to the POS application developers to be developed and once again approved with the processors. This entire system is expensive, timely, and very involved. As one can imagine, security is of the highest importance to better protect everyone involved in an EFT transaction to best eliminate fraud in the future. Orca Dynamics will be motivated to deploy upgrades to customers as soon as it is possible.

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