An interesting viewpoint by Joyce Rosenburg from inc.com discusses the associated costs of having to upgrade your credit card readers to work with the new chip based credit cards that were designed to reduce credit card fraud. Businesses are required to update their equipment by October 1st or face the chance of being held liable for transactions made with phony chip cards. Most retailers are going to bear the brunt of these costs.
But that's not all! If your accounting system is connected to the readers they may not work with the new equipment and may require you to upgrade or replace your system to be able to automate the transaction processing.
What are the alternatives? I can't seem to think of anything but move forward and take the financial hit. Not a pleasant situation to be in for all of us small business owners.