Heartland Payment Systems, the nation’s fifth largest payments processor, has installed its E3 terminals at 1,020 merchant locations since commercially launching the technology on May 24 at the 2010 National Restaurant Association Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago.
E3 terminals, which accept both mag stripe and contactless EMV cards, are specifically designed to protect cardholder credit and debit card data through its tamper-resistant hardware and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption, the most secure encryption algorithm available, says Heartland.
“EMV will likely be coming to the US as a result of demand from young people wanting to use embedded NFC chips in their cell phones to make contactless payments,” says Bob Carr, Heartland’s chairman and chief executive officer. “An unintended consequence of smart phones is that they will serve as the most secure payment form factor: contactless EMV payments authenticated with a PIN. The risk of accepting electronic payments will come off the backs of the merchant community and be placed firmly with the consumer - just like with cash and PIN debit. Heartland is investigating contactless EMV as we strive to continually raise the bar on payment security. As such, we recommend business owners not upgrade to any new equipment that does not contemplate contactless EMV in the future.” ![[end]](/resources/bullet/contactlessnews-4.gif)
