Boston Retail Partners is addressing retailers’ concerns about how EMV transaction processing times are impacting customer satisfaction.
Despite the benefits that EMV presents to many retailers, the new transaction process has had a negative impact on transaction processing times, and many retailers are second-guessing the methods and systems that they have used to implement EMV.
EMV is saving many retailers $100,000 – $1,000,000 a month in chargebacks, but the EMV process has lengthened POS transaction times. In some cases, the new process has increased transaction times by more than 15 seconds – which seems like forever to a customer in a hurry. These excessive EMV transaction processing times are degrading the customer experience and increasing labor costs by forcing retailers to staff more registers to make checkout lines more tolerable.
Retailers are concerned about how the slow transaction processing will impact back-to-school and holiday shopping lines and customer satisfaction, not to mention the added labor costs necessary to have more lanes open.
While slow EMV transaction processing is a serious problem, many retailers, and vendors in the industries impacted by EMV, don’t have the expertise, resources or time to solve the problem. This problem is further complicated by the fact that the EMV industry continues to change with new technologies and the difficulties of contactless EMV.
“While this is a challenging problem to solve, the risks are too high to ignore. The increase in labor costs to staff more lanes to keep lines manageable is outrageous, one retailer estimated that one extra second per transaction costs an additional $600,000 a year in store payroll,” said Perry Kramer, vice president and practice lead, Boston Retail Partners. “Of even greater concern is the negative impact of transaction frustration driving consumers out of the stores to online shopping (stores lose upselling and spontaneous purchase opportunities) or to your competitors who have faster checkout times.”
EMV/POS Benchmark Assessment Service
BRP’s EMV/POS Benchmark Assessment Service expands its existing POS assessment methodologies to include a comparison of your EMV processing time to other retailers and leverages best practices to help optimize your POS and EMV transaction flow. BRP understands the dynamics and nuances of EMV processing and has worked with leading retailers to improve the speed of POS and EMV transactions.
BRP’s methodology includes a thorough review of your current POS and payment terminal environment, including: technology, people and processes. The process incorporates a time study analysis that benchmarks your environment to industry and retail segment averages (your competitors). This analysis looks at the total POS and EMV processing time – the time between when the last item is entered in the POS system, includes when the consumer inserts the chip card into the device, to the moment they receive approval and are ready to sign for their purchase in both fixed and mobile environments. Further analysis investigates many components to pinpoint the areas that are opportunities for improvement, balanced against the effort to implement.
The resulting recommendations will include:
- General review of the entire checkout process and ergonomics – What are you doing right and what could be done better?
- Actionable steps to improve the speed of POS and EMV transaction processing
- A review and recommendation on if, when and how to implement emerging technology enhancements
- Analysis of mobile payments and mobile POS to identify if it is right for your organization and if your mobile solution is aligned with your EMV strategy
- Insights into what is coming next for EMV and other payment options so that you can plan and react accordingly
