Despite Extended Deadline, Divine's Converts to EMV

SPOKANE, Wash. — Divine's, a Spokane-based fuel and automotive services provider with 12 locations, is making the switch over to EMV ahead of the 2020 compliance deadline with the help of Gilbarco Veeder-Root.

Family-owned Divine’s is standardizing its convenience stores with Gilbarco’s Passport point-of-sale (POS) system for indoor EMV transactions, and with the company’s FlexPay IV CRIND for forecourt EMV transactions. With these changes, Divine’s has opted to convert to full EMV chip card acceptance across its network.

Along with the EMV conversion, Divine’s hopes to draw more customers in-store by launching Applause TV at its fuel dispensers.

"We are pleased to be one step closer to completing our EMV upgrades and look forward to bringing the Applause TV forecourt media technology across all of our locations," said Divine’s CEO Jim Redmon. "It will certainly boost our business inside the store. We also look forward to turning on EMV as soon as possible to protect our customers and ourselves from fraud liability."

According to Redmon, the upgrade to EMV ahead of the 2020 deadline was motivated by a desire to mitigate fraud, and also to increase store traffic.  

Greensboro, N.C.-based Gilbarco has been looking to encourage retailers to make the move to EMV ahead of the compliance deadline, including at its 2017 Retail Technology Conference held in Myrtle Beach, N.C., earlier this year.

Mark Williams, Gilbarco’s vice president of marketing for North America, applauded Divine's for being among those to preemptively shift to enabling EMV transactions.

"Divine's is another example of a leading retailer recognizing the need to continue moving forward with its EMV upgrades," Williams said. "We continue to see retailers understand that their customers are beginning to expect the ability to pay with their EMV chip card. Many of these retailers also understand they can leverage their EMV upgrades to drive their business forward, whether with media solutions like Applause TV, remote monitoring and management capabilities with Insite360, or mobile payment acceptance via contactless readers."

Founded in 1956, Divine's has 12 convenience store locations across the greater Spokane and Spokane Valley areas of Washington State.