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Practical steps to prevent credit card and payment fraud as an independent cycling retailer

4 Dec 2024

As credit card fraud becomes increasingly sophisticated, taking these steps could help you stay ahead of the fraudsters…
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Scottish retailers call for urgent business rates support as gap widens with rest of UK

29 Nov 2024

Scottish independent retailers, including those in the cycling sector, are urging the Scottish Government to provide crucial business rates relief in its upcoming budget, as the disparity in... Read more…

Bira and ACT welcome new House of Lords report on high street regeneration

28 Nov 2024

Independent retailers back call for local leadership and simplified funding.
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Seven-in-ten cycle traders boycott Black Friday as cost pressures mount

26 Nov 2024

Seven in ten cycle retailers across the UK will boycott this year's Black Friday sales event, according to a survey of the bicycle trade by the ACT.
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Cycling club raising funds for youth bike maintenance workshops and 'go slow' inclusivity initiative

21 Nov 2024

A local cycling club is raising money and seeking donations and assistance in order to teach bike maintenance to young people through a series of workshops in 2025.
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Bira meets with Treasury members to discuss Budget concerns and business rate reform proposal

17 Nov 2024

Bira has held a meeting with members of the Treasury team to discuss concerns following its robust response to the Government’s recent Budget announcement.
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ACT teams up with Saledock to supercharge bike shop efficiency and customer experience

14 Nov 2024

The ACT has announced a dynamic partnership with Saledock - an all-in-one POS, eCommerce, and inventory management platform tailor-made for bike shops and workshops.
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'Devastating and out of touch' - independent retailers react to Budget bombshell

1 Nov 2024

Independent retailers across Britain have reacted with dismay to yesterday's Budget, with many warning of store closures, job losses and cancelled expansion plans.
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Devastating Budget Delivers Triple Blow to Independent Retailers, Says ACT and Bira

30 Oct 2024

The British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) and the ACT have condemned today's Budget as the most damaging for independent retailers in recent memory, with... Read more…

Retailers paying one-third of all UK business rates despite making up only 9% of economy

30 Oct 2024

Retailers and hospitality businesses are paying three times their economic share in business rates, according to analysis by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and UK Hospitality.
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Payment-processing outages at UK retailers raise reliability issues for cashless transactions.

Posted on in Business News

Recent payment disruptions at supermarkets and fast-food outlets have raised questions on the need for improved reliability.

card reader

Payment-processing failures at fast food restaurant McDonalds, supermarkets Tesco and Sainsbury’s, and bakery chain Greggs, highlighted retailers’ increasing reliance on third-party payment systems and the technical issues hampering a global shift from cash to digital payments.

All the affected retailers had problems with order-processing or accepting contactless payments, causing locations to close or to only accept alternative payment methods. While a problem with a software update was cited in some cases, none of the companies have revealed specific details of what occurred, nor have they reported the failure as a cybersecurity incident.

“That could be because even they don’t yet know,” Aaron Press, research director for worldwide payment strategies at IDC told CIO Magazine.

“The layers of technology that go into a payment environment are surprisingly complex,” he said in an interview. “The larger the merchant, the more complex it could be. I suspect the forensics will be done and someone will figure out where responsibility lies.”

Indeed, to fulfil card and other types of cashless payments, retailers must rely on third parties—often a lot of them, noted Narayana Pappu, CEO at Zendata, a provider of data security and privacy compliance solutions.

“There is no way around it,” he said. “Typically, there are 10 intermediaries between a consumer swiping their credit card and a merchant getting paid.”

Most of the retailers reported getting systems back up online within a business day, which is not catastrophic but still longer than usual for software-related updates, IDC’s Press noted. “The surprising thing isn’t that [an update] caused an outage, but for how long,” he said. “Usually, they are resolved very quickly.”

Moreover, the payment issues varied from being categorized as “contactless” to orders being processed online, which suggests that the problem was in one of the pieces of software that carry transactions from customer to vendor, Press said. This might indicate that the problem was with a gateway, which is “the software equivalent of the payment terminal,” though it’s impossible to say for sure, he noted.

The incidents call into question the global retail industry’s increasing reliance on cashless payments, whether they be point-of-sale, device-based, or via some type of online system, and how companies can prepare for the inevitable technology glitch, the occurrence of which is an issue of when, not if, experts said.

“The only guarantee for any computer technology is that it will fail at some point,” observed Tamir Passi, senior product manager at automated software-as-a-service (SaaS) security provider DoControl. “The opportunity here is for payment processors to differentiate themselves on resilience and fast recovery.”

And while cost will always be the primary factor in how a retailer chooses a payment processor, some companies may start factoring in service level agreements or availability metrics as priorities in future contracts, Passi said.

It’s unlikely that the adoption of card, contactless, and other digital retail transactions will slow, but it’s also unlikely that a completely cashless society will become a reality — at least, not for a long time.

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