Retailers and customers should be ready as credit card PINs become mandatory and signatures are phased out
Tue 29 Jul 2014 | 1:43 pm
Patrick Avenell
… Because most Australian retailers lease their payment terminals from their bank, most proprietors don’t actually have to do anything to ready themselves for this change. On Thursday evening — the night before the switch begins — banks will push firmware upgrades to POS machines around Australia. Once this has been completed, the terminals will no longer offer a signature as an option and customers must enter a valid PIN for the purchase to be completed.
The exception to this rule is retailers that own their POS terminals. These are generally the larger, major retailers. In this instance, the applicable bank should have already been in contact with these dealers to coordinate the switchover.
PINwise is a collective of Australia’s major banks and financial institutions. The group says that although some terminals will not be PIN-only until the end of the 3-month transition, on 31 October 2014, retailers should start training customer immediately.
“During this transition, the terminal screen may continue to read ‘PIN or OK’ and the cardholder could transact without PIN, however, you should encourage your customers to use their PIN rather than allowing them to sign, as they need to get into the habit of using their PIN,” said a PINwise spokesperson in a retailer training manual…
