EMV card readers and Tessitura

Clean Clean false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

Thanks everyone for all the great questions.  We discussed this internally and we want to provide as much detail as we possibly can as you are planning for EMV.  There are a few areas where we are still waiting for final confirmation, but rather than wait for that we wanted to provide everything we know right now.  The information below will updated on our website as well.  So with that – here is everything we can provide on the topic of EMV at this time:

EMV (which stands for Europay, Mastercard and Visa) is a global standard for credit cards with embedded chips.  As we described here, in October, 2015 changes in the industry in the United States means that the liability between merchants (you) and card issuers (banks) will shift.  And if a bank has issued chipped cards, and a merchant accepts that card in a face-to-face transaction (card present), and the merchant doesn’t have the ability to record a chipped transaction but instead simply swipes the card, the merchant must accept the liability for fraudulent transactions.  Note that this does not affect web or phone sales, only sales where the card is present.  Also, this change does not affect your PCI compliance.

In order to make Tessitura integrate with EMV hardware, we have paired with Element, our North American credit card gateway provider, to upgrade our credit card interface.  As you can imagine this is quite a complex process as it involves not only the Tessitura software, but also changes to our Payment Gateway Server, testing with lots of different hardware, and finally a large certification process.  This is made more complex and time-consuming because the entire credit card industry is trying to adapt to this shift all at once.  And there are lots of moving parts!

We are happy to report that we are well down this path and will be releasing an upgrade to v12.5 that will include the new functionality.  V12.5 is currently in BETA and we are aiming for a July General Release.  12.5.1, which is what we will call the EMV-supported release, would then be released prior to October.  We have made the decision that it will not be practical to release an EMV upgrade to v12.1.2.  Doing so would not only double our testing and certification efforts (and therefore the timing of the release), but we also feel that this would cause additional workload for you.  The upgrade from 12.1.2 to 12.5 is quite a simple process and the major new features in v12.5 (Pricing Rules, TRBO) need not be used until you are ready.  There are no major changes to the data structure which would force you to look at custom reports or procedures.  So we don’t see much advantage to asking users to upgrade to a EMV-ready version of 12.1.2 and then months later upgrade again to the EMV-ready version of 12.5.   Note: because of the many changes to Tessitura between v11 and v12, an EMV patch for v11 is not technically possible.

So if you are currently running v11 you can upgrade directly to EMV-ready version of 12.5 (12.5.1) which will require the v12 data migration.  If you are running v12.0, v12.1 or v12.1.2 you can upgrade directly to 12.5.1.  For v12.5 users, moving to 12.5.1 will be a simple upgrade, much like a hotfix.

We are still working with Element to nail down the details of their hardware availability and upgrades they are offering for recently purchased hardware.  As soon as that is available we will make that information available to everyone.

We expect that different organizations will have different priorities around upgrading to work with EMV by October 2015.  As it is for card-present transactions only, and only shifts liability on fraudulent transactions, some organizations that have lower instances of fraudulent transactions and lower instances of card present transactions may prioritize this lower.  Others may prioritize this higher.  Most industry estimates predict that 50% or less of merchants will have everything in place to meet this date.  Either way, the Network is committed to having a solution ready in time for the deadline, with the above hopefully providing more clarity on the options and strategies available.

Thanks!

Thanks everyone for all the great questions.  We discussed this internally and we want to provide as much detail as we possibly can as you are planning for EMV.  There are a few areas where we are still waiting for final confirmation, but rather than wait for that we wanted to provide everything we know right now.  The information below will updated on our website as well.  So with that – here is everything we can provide on the topic of EMV at this time:

EMV (which stands for Europay, Mastercard and Visa) is a global standard for credit cards with embedded chips.  As we described here, in October, 2015 changes in the industry in the United States means that the liability between merchants (you) and card issuers (banks) will shift.  And if a bank has issued chipped cards, and a merchant accepts that card in a face-to-face transaction (card present), and the merchant doesn’t have the ability to record a chipped transaction but instead simply swipes the card, the merchant must accept the liability for fraudulent transactions.  Note that this does not affect web or phone sales, only sales where the card is present.  Also, this change does not affect your PCI compliance.

In order to make Tessitura integrate with EMV hardware, we have paired with Element, our North American credit card gateway provider, to upgrade our credit card interface.  As you can imagine this is quite a complex process as it involves not only the Tessitura software, but also changes to our Payment Gateway Server, testing with lots of different hardware, and finally a large certification process.  This is made more complex and time-consuming because the entire credit card industry is trying to adapt to this shift all at once.  And there are lots of moving parts!

We are happy to report that we are well down this path and will be releasing an upgrade to v12.5 that will include the new functionality.  V12.5 is currently in BETA and we are aiming for a July General Release.  12.5.1, which is what we will call the EMV-supported release, would then be released prior to October.  We have made the decision that it will not be practical to release an EMV upgrade to v12.1.2.  Doing so would not only double our testing and certification efforts (and therefore the timing of the release), but we also feel that this would cause additional workload for you.  The upgrade from 12.1.2 to 12.5 is quite a simple process and the major new features in v12.5 (Pricing Rules, TRBO) need not be used until you are ready.  There are no major changes to the data structure which would force you to look at custom reports or procedures.  So we don’t see much advantage to asking users to upgrade to a EMV-ready version of 12.1.2 and then months later upgrade again to the EMV-ready version of 12.5.   Note: because of the many changes to Tessitura between v11 and v12, an EMV patch for v11 is not technically possible.

So if you are currently running v11 you can upgrade directly to EMV-ready version of 12.5 (12.5.1) which will require the v12 data migration.  If you are running v12.0, v12.1 or v12.1.2 you can upgrade directly to 12.5.1.  For v12.5 users, moving to 12.5.1 will be a simple upgrade, much like a hotfix.

We are still working with Element to nail down the details of their hardware availability and upgrades they are offering for recently purchased hardware.  As soon as that is available we will make that information available to everyone.

We expect that different organizations will have different priorities around upgrading to work with EMV by October 2015.  As it is for card-present transactions only, and only shifts liability on fraudulent transactions, some organizations that have lower instances of fraudulent transactions and lower instances of card present transactions may prioritize this lower.  Others may prioritize this higher.  Most industry estimates predict that 50% or less of merchants will have everything in place to meet this date.  Either way, the Network is committed to having a solution ready in time for the deadline, with the above hopefully providing more clarity on the options and strategies available.

Thanks!