I am shocked that when I go to Publix, the credit cards with a chip seem to take about 30-40 seconds to process. This might not seem like a long time but since it holds the line still, it is a long long time. Basically, after the checkout process, the payment leaves the cashier sitting around idle waiting for the credit card to process.
What's weird is that in other super markets like the Whole Earth Store, it seems to be almost instantaneous, definitely less then 3 seconds. Why can't Publix, with all their scale and resources, manage to accelerate the process.
Could it be that they are doing a credit check and getting approval in a way that other supermarkets skip?
On another note, I'd like to see whether blogger does trackbacks the way the wordpress sites do. Seen the post on studying stem with bicycles?
1 comment:
I can only speculate but most likely Publix is using an inhouse payment server that is still using some older technology on the back end. Whole foods, assuming you're referring to them, not whole earth, either way, is likely using a similar server setup, but is most likely using the internet or even a direct T1 connection to a processor's authorization network. So, while Publix's customer facing terminals may be new, they are still using an older possibly even dial based method of authorizing transactions.
When EMV was initially being tested, we worked with Verifone on what could basically be considered some Beta testing for their terminal apps. Over dial connections, EMV authorizations routinely took 20 - 40 seconds. Over the internet, that time typically dropped to the 5 second range. For high end systems like you might find in some grocery stores or other large higher-end retailers, they could get them down into the 1 - 2 second range.
While they could be doing some marketing related data manipulation or something fancy, I'd lean towards them using a legacy payment system in their back room that is still using dial or a slower protocol to authorize transactions.
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