Ingenico Teams with Avant-Garde to Sell EMV-Chip Card Terminals

Avant-Garde Marketing Solutions (AGMS), a merchant service provider, will sell and deploy a number of Ingenico’s new countertop terminals, including those that handle EMV-chip card payments.

The machines include Ingenico’s newly developed iCT220 and iCT250 countertop terminals and iWL250 mobile wireless devices.

"Through our partnership with Ingenico, we are now able to offer a differentiated, fully EMV-ready portfolio of products combined with the best customer service to our nationwide portfolio of clients," said Teresa Madrigal, AGMS’ president and chief executive officer, in a release.

Ingenico’s terminals are primarily sold to small-to-medium sized merchants, and all devices are designed to integrate with a merchant’s existing payments infrastructure.

Other payment tech providers have expressed concerns about the tough sell for EMV cards in the U.S. Merchants are notoriously cool to EMV migration, which is designed to add card security by replacing magnetic stripes with a chip that’s embedded in the card. Proponents, such as the card networks, say EMV is safer than magnetic-stripe cards. The networks have instituted rolling deadlines for migration, with most merchants facing a liability shift for fraud if they do not have the proper hardware in place by October, 2015.