Let’s go back to 2015.
The credit card industry had been warning us for years: EMV is coming. Chip-and-PIN. No more magnetic swipes. The hospitality industry heard them, nodded politely, and did absolutely nothing. It’s hard. No one’s ready. We’ll deal with it later.
Then October 1st arrived and EMV was live.
At first, nothing changed. Swipes still worked. Most cards didn’t even have chips yet. Banks weren’t ready. The day-to-day looked exactly the same.
What changed was invisible, and devastating.
The credit card companies imposed a new rule: if any part of your payment processing workflow wasn’t EMV-compliant and a customer filed a chargeback, you automatically lost. No dispute process. No chance to prove you delivered the service. Just an automatic loss charged to the weakest link in the chain.
How big a deal was this? We had over $100,000 in chargebacks per month. It became a very big deal.
Why we couldn’t just fix it
This is where people’s eyes glaze over, but stay with me, because this is why it took an entire industry 18 months to solve what sounds like a simple compliance update.
Your property management system has to be EMV-certified. Your payment gateway has to certify with your PMS. Your gateway has to certify with your payment processor. Your processor has to certify with your bank. And every one of those certifications is independent. Many-to-many.
My software vendor said my gateway was number 3 on their certification list. My gateway said my software was number 12 on theirs. My gateway said my bank was sixth on their list. My bank said they were fifteenth.
That was the entire industry in 2015: everyone in line, waiting for everyone else.
Our software vendor made it worse. They had a cloud version that was EMV-ready but came with massive subscription fees. The locally hosted version we ran? They refused to update it. All development resources were going to cloud. Their message was clear: migrate or wait.
The blame game
Finance thought this was an IT problem. I told them it was primarily a finance issue, the credit card companies changed the rules, not the technology. But I understood why they saw it that way. The IT guy was the one explaining certification chains and payment gateways.
My CFO told me: “You seem to be the only one who understands how this works.”
Honestly? I was learning as I went. But I probably knew more about it than anyone else in the building. Credit to me for figuring it out. But finance should have seen this coming years ago.
So we did the only thing we could do: hurry up and wait. Eat the chargebacks. Document the timeline. Watch the tension build every quarter as leadership asked why we were hemorrhaging money and the answer kept coming back: “IT hasn’t fixed it yet.”
The cold call
A few months later, I got a call from a bank rep about a hotel technology conference I was attending. Did I want to visit their booth?
I said: “The only thing I’d be interested in is if you have a solution for EMV. I use this software, this gateway, and this payment processor, and I’m still a year out in the certification queue.”
She said: “We can do that.”
I made her repeat it. Twice.
Your software connects to a new payment gateway. That gateway connects to us as your processor and bank. It’s already certified.
I booked the 8 AM slot on the first day of the conference.
The wall
Here’s what the solution required: a software upgrade (heavy but doable), a new payment gateway (my call), and changing banks (not my call).
I got back from the conference, wrote it all up, and got time with the CFO.
“I can fix the chargebacks.”
“It’s about time.”
“I need to do a software update, switch payment gateways, and change banks.”
He looked at me like I had a third eyeball on my head.
“We’re not changing banks. You need to fix this.”
Plan shelved.
This went on for 3 to 6 months. Same cycle: chargebacks are killing us, IT hasn’t fixed it. Chargebacks are killing us, IT hasn’t fixed it.
The hallway
One day, the president walked by and asked where we were on chargebacks. The CFO said IT was still working on it.
I said: “I have a solution, but it requires changing banks, and that’s not an option.”
The president said: “If it saves me $100,000 a month, it’s an option.”
That afternoon I was back in the CFO’s office.
The fix
3 to 4 months to vet the new bank. Software upgrade to an EMV-compliant version. New gateway integration. New credit card readers across the property. Connected to the new bank.
6 months from that meeting with the CFO, we were fully EMV-compliant. Chargebacks dropped back to normal levels, roughly 10% dispute losses, same as before the liability shift. That’s approximately $100,000 a month back on the right side of the ledger.
Our hotel was EMV-compliant about 2 to 3 years before the major chains figured it out.
To date, it’s probably the most complicated challenge I’ve solved. It took a year and a half from start to finish. It crossed IT, finance, vendor management, and banking relationships. The solution wasn’t technical, it was political. The technology existed. Someone just had to be willing to change banks.
It’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in my career.