By Jennifer Surane
January 7, 2020
Gas stations around the U.S. are rushing to upgrade fuel pumps to accept credit and debit cards with chips after Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. rejected a request to delay a looming deadline to complete the work.
“There’s not enough technicians to do the installments,” Smith said. “There’s not enough inventory. Even if there were enough contractors, there’s not enough dispensers available.”
Most retailers began to upgrade payment systems in 2015 — the first of a series of deadlines set by Visa and Mastercard as the U.S. worked to catch up with nations in Europe and Asia that had long adopted the more-secure chip cards. For fuel retailers, the deadline was ultimately pushed back five years as the industry faced costs of more than $3.9 billion to do the work.