Loyalty: Bringing Home the Beacon?
For c-store retailers, the allure of messaging fuel-only customers with enticing in-store deals has undeniable appeal. However, those beacons are pinging into nowhere—at least for now.
After years of claims that hydrogen fuel-cell technology was about to debut—only to be delayed—it appears we now have a firm date: 2015. That’s when Toyota, Honda and Hyundai plan to introduce hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEV) to the mass market, and California hopes to open the first network of about 37 hydrogen-fueling stations in the country. The hard part? Getting those fueling stations open.
With EMV (EuroPay, MasterCard and Visa) timelines quickly approaching the convenience-store and retail-petroleum industries, POS system providers, pump providers and merchants are preparing for the October 2015 liability shift for in-store systems and the October 2017 liability shift for automated fuel dispensers. As retailers become acquainted with EMV and the needed system enhancements to support EMV, they soon learn that EMV can be a time-intensive and costly endeavor.