EMV Equipment, what is hot, what is available

What types of payment acceptance terminals are merchants, VARs, processors and others considering? What are distributors doing? What comments do the manufacturers of this equipment have to share?

Yesterday we wrote about the cloudy and uncertain present for those coping with the transition to new credit card standards . Today we will share comments on the equipment itself.

We asked what vendors were using, if they were experiencing delays, and anything else about payment equipment we should be aware of. One problem that has turned up recently is that certain payment equipment needs to be “injected” with encrypted data specific to the merchant and his location. Some vendors have been selling equipment that will have to be shipped to an authorized center that can inject the needed data. Other vendors are authorized and can inject the encrypted data BEFORE shipment. Merchants who purchased “EMV-ready” equipment months ago or last year may have to return it for injection before being able to use it – particularly for merchants who are adding point-to-point encryption or for merchants who have changed banks or processors. Since a healthy chunk of software companies and merchants are looking to P2P, it seems a lot of equipment will need to be injected. We are preparing an article focusing specifically on injection, keys and kernels and will be publishing it later this week.

Which brand and model of equipment are you planning to use and are there any difficulties getting the equipment – backorders or delays?

Justin Zeigler, Datacap Systems, Inc , www.datacapsystems.com “Datacap will be supporting a variety of plug and play EMV hardware via our Out-of-Scope payment interfaces, so merchants will be able to choose the option that best fits their requirements. Initially, we’ll be supporting the VeriFone VX805 (which has seen some shortages) and the Ingenico Telium 2 line, with additional hardware options coming in 2016.”

“Verifone MX915. We preordered large quantities, however the back log is still causing issues.”

Jennifer Wiebe, Speedline, www.speedline.com – “SpeedLine will support equipment from Ingenico and Verifone, with models dependent on the payment solution in place in the restaurant.”

Dan Chandre, www.Booker.com – “We are looking to support a wide range of equipment, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the availability of the current models. That being said, every equipment provider is also on the verge of releasing something new, and I am disappointed in the timing of these devices and the challenges represented by their late delivery to market.”

Roger Blanchard, Osprey Retail Systems, www.ospreyretailsystems.com – “This is the most frustrating issue for us. We have been pushing the Equinox L5300 for the last two years as it is EMV capable. We just found out the firmware does not use the correct encryption (TEP2) so it cannot be used for EMV. We then were told NCR Payments put pressure on them and they moved up in their schedule to add TEP2 so we thought we were good. We asked our payment vendor if they were going to add support for the L5300 (we are using today with their OOS solution) and the answer was “not on roadmap for 2015”. So, this means if my merchants want to be compliant by October they have to buy new equipment.”

Jason Seed, Kounta, www.Kounta.com – “We support Dejavoo, Pax, Ingenico and Verifone dependant on the processor.”

Rick Robshaw, www.clubprophetsystems.com – “ISO’s are telling merchants to buy equipment before even sending SDK changes and test equipment to POS providers. Test equipment so far has been impossible to acquire.”

Dan King New West Technologies www.newestech.com – “So far we have been getting great support form Magtek, they have been leading in readiness where we are concerned. We have been shipping EMV compliant devices since last year.”

Touch Dynamic, www.touchdynamic.com – Touch Dynamic is currently in the process of developing our own EMV solution with ID Tech that will specifically work with our Quest 7”and 10” Tablet. Expected date of production is August, 2015 which will give our customers time to fully learn the product before the full transition in October, 2015.

Andy Beaudet, UpFront Software Corp www.Upfrontsoftware.com – “Equinox and Ingenico. Slight delays experienced but better then what we expected. Equinox has been especially helpful about keeping us informed regarding availability.”

Norm Merritt, Shopkeep, www.shopkeep.com “ we are working with Ingenico for our NFC/EMV enabled card reader, and we are currently selling their iCMP model. This model has the advantage of being a mobile payment processor, allowing for many of our quick-service restaurant merchants, including food trucks to be able to process transactions on the go.”

Seung J Kim, iConnectPOS, www.iconnectpos.com – “we are deploying Verifone’s VX and MX series devices here in the United States. These devices are EMV, swipe, and NFC (Near Field Communication) capable which allows for Apple Pay.”

www.TouchMateUSA.com Ben Williams, Touchmate Inc,We haven’t placed any firm orders yet so we don’t know about actual delivery. We have qualified several vendors so that customers will have a choice. So far, the most interest has been shown in a 3-technology unit from MagTek and one model from VeriFone.



Apparently there is plenty of business to go around for all the hardware vendors, but the equipment is not getting into the field. If software companies can’t get equipment to test, then getting software ready for EMV or P2P is impossible. What is a medium sized problem today will be a huge problem in July.

Tomorrow we will discuss injection in detail.





(We’d expressly like to thank ScanSource and Ingenico for their help. Photos courtesy of Ingenico.)