New MasterCard POS standards

Interesting news ...

I run Counterpoint POS system in our bricks and mortar store and haven't heard a word about this from either Radiant Systems (the owners of Counterpoint) nor Mastercard.

What I'm reading into this is that stores that are running old versions of Counterpoint and the other mentioned POS systems must upgrade their POS software (NOT Zencart) to be compliant.

I don't think that this has anything to do with Zencart or the associated payment gateways that ZenCart uses. Those payment gateways already know what the PCI/MC requirements are and should be meeting or working on meeting those requirements.

On the other hand, one must have a maintenance agreement ($$$) with Counterpoint to receive half-yearly updates to the POS software and any bug fixes. Merchants who have let those agreements lapse find it costly to renew just to be current.

Along with running Counterpoint and using their payment gateway (First Data) comes the pleasure of having Security Metrics insure PCI compliance, and they've not indicated anything either.

The OP can always log onto the Counterpoint Users Forum (cpuser.org) and see if there is any relevant information posted there.

As it is definately confusing, I still think that the ZenCart Devs need to insure to the community that there is no upgrade/alteration required to ZenCart for those that receive this message...

• MasterCard will require merchants to perform partial authorizations and real-time authorization reversals for debit and prepaid card transactions, in addition, merchants will be required to support available balance responses for prepaid card transactions.*This shouldn't have anything to do with ZenCart. This is for swiped transactions using a pin-pad I'd bet. I'll check with my contact at Radiant Payment Systems tomorrow about this and get a definitive answer from the merchant service people for Counterpoint.

Forwarded a snippet of the letter received by the OP to Radiant Payment Systems.

In a subsequent phone conversation I was told this letter basically informs retailers that use the mentioned POS systems in their brick and mortar operations that they need to make sure they are using the latest versions. My contact's advice to me since we're running Counterpoint is to make sure we keep our POS updated and patched and we'll be fine.

This has nothing to do with ZenCart or any of the payment gateways that ZenCart uses presently, but I would surmise that the gateways need to adhere to this new requirement.

Hope this clears up any confusion.

Thanks Doug and that was exactly the reason I asked if the shops were physical and using a Point of Sale machine.