A hands on approach to EMV Chip & PIN

TORONTO — By October 2020, all Canadian merchants must be EMV Chip & PIN compliant as mandated by Visa Canada, but getting there can be complex and frustrating. Calgary-based National Payments offers a made-in-Canada, hands on approach to guiding hoteliers through the process and ensuring their technology works.

The majority of hotels in Canada are still processing credit cards via mag stripe authorization, National Payments chief operating officer Michael Strong told CLN in an interview at a Toronto restaurant last week.

Canada adopted Chip & PIN six years ahead of the U.S., and many branded hotels, some of them based in the U.S., have been slow to adopt EMV Chip & PIN technology.

At the same time, credit card fraud continues to grow in Canada and U.S. The average chargeback due to credit card fraud in Canada is valued at $600 per chargeback. The average hotel can expect to receive thousands of dollars in chargebacks every year.

Hotels that have adopted EMV Chip & PIN technology have seen their chargeback losses due to fraudulent credit cards decrease by 76 per cent in the U.S. National Payments hospitality merchants have seen their chargeback losses due to fraudulent credit cards decrease by 90 per cent.

“We truly believe that we are in the best position and that we are uniquely qualified to help those hotels migrate to the EMV Chip & PIN, better than any other provider in Canada,” said Strong. “Our focus is on hospitality; it's our No. 1 industry, and we have been extremely successful on the hotel side over the last nine years.

“We recognize that hotels need a merchant services provider that understands the unique challenges of the hotel industry as well as their exposure to fraud and chargebacks,” said Strong. “We have worked very hard fill this need and establish ourselves as the only provider that specializes in the hospitality industry in Canada.”

The process of implementing Chip & PIN is complicated, involving the merchant's PMS system, a gateway provider and a processor. National Payments was established in 2007, and its team members have over 40 years of collective merchant industry experience. The company can work with many different PMS systems, gateways and merchant processors.

The team can work with the leading hotel PMS systems in Canada, including the latest EMV solutions certified with Opera, LightSpeed, Maestro and SynXis among many others.

Over the years, National Payments has earned a reputation for superior service to its hospitality merchants, and we have the testimonials to prove it, Strong said.

National Payments is the only provider in Canada that provides on-site implementation, activation and training — staying on-site until the system works perfectly. The company takes the time to educate its hotel merchants and train their staff on best practices for reducing fraud and chargebacks — a value that no other processor provides in the industry.

“You don’t have to disrupt your business or change your bank. We are experts at merchant processor conversions and we do all the switch transfer work for you. Our team is looking forward to working with you, and building a superior point-of-sale solution that will meet the future needs of your business,” Strong noted.

“We have upgraded hundreds of Canadian hotels to EMV Chip & PIN, reducing their processing risk, and improving check-in efficiencies,” Strong said. “We work with a large and diversified portfolio of Hotel PMS systems to provide hotels fully integrated EMV Chip & PIN capability.”

To view the National Payments hotel video click here.