N.C. Station Sees First U.S. Fuel Dispenser EMV Chip Transaction

BURLINGTON, N.C. — One North Carolina small operator has become the first to process a EMV chip transaction in the United States.

49 Fuels, which is located in Burlington, processed the transaction utilizing Gilbarco's Passport Point-of-Sale (POS) and Encore fuel dispensers on the First Data Network.

According to Gilbarco, the Passport POS system has supported EMV in-store transactions since May 2016. With simple software upgrades, Passport sites can be easily configured and enabled for full EMV transactions at the dispenser for all major card types.

"Our dispensers were already EMV-ready, so turning on EMV at the dispenser just required a simple Passport software upgrade. We've seen our customers rapidly become accustomed to paying with their chip cards inside the store on our Passport system, and they are quickly expecting to be able to use their chip card at the dispenser, as they know that it gives them additional security," said Kamlesh Patel, owner of the 49 Fuels location.

Passport POS processes forecourt EMV transactions by leveraging FlexPay CRINDS from Gilbarco. The company expects forecourt EMV payments to begin turning on across the country, as the software is released for payment networks. Gilbarco also speculates that EMV will gain momentum as fraud migrates to less secure payment points and security-conscious customers migrate to those sites with enhanced security. 

"Gilbarco is proud to continue to lead the market on EMV technologies, both inside the store and at the dispenser. Our customers are looking to enable EMV at the dispenser as soon as possible, to provide the security their customers expect of them, and to get the most of the forecourt EMV hardware investments they've already made," said Mark Williams, vice president of marketing, Gilbarco Veeder-Root. 

EMV cards have an embedded chip, which is a small metal square on the front of the card that adds a higher level of security to the transaction when used in chip-enabled terminals. 

EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa — the three companies that originally created the security standard. 

Greensboro-based Gilbarco Veeder-Root is a technology company for retail and commercial fueling operations. Its product lines includes: fuel dispensers, dispenser media, point-of-sale systems, payment systems, tank gauges, software development and integration, fleet management systems and nozzles.