Canadian Tire Stores Ready for Canadian Chip Card Roll-Out

"As a major national retailer visited by 40 per cent of all Canadians every week, Canadian Tire's chip readiness signals significant progress towards preparing the Canadian marketplace for chip," said Kevin Stanton, President of MasterCard Canada. "Over the last few years, there's been a lot of behind-the-scenes planning and preparation with issuers, processors, and business partners. Later this year and next, Canadian MasterCard cardholders will begin to receive their chip cards with national critical mass expected by 2010."

The majority of merchants will be made chip-ready by their payment processors which are upgrading point-of-sale terminals to be chip compatible. But large national retailers like Canadian Tire run proprietary payment processing systems which require custom preparation and planning. MasterCard's approach to merchant chip adoption has been designed specifically to accommodate this need for customization with the benefit of accelerating deployment of chip by large, integrated merchants like Canadian Tire.

"Canadian Tire wants to be ready to offer our customers the newest innovation in enhanced payment security and convenience," said Marco Marrone, President of Canadian Tire Financial Services. "MasterCard has been very helpful in assisting our preparations for chip. They're approaching the implementation to chip in a very business-friendly way by taking our operations requirements into account and minimizing costs."