The release of Version 2.0 of the PCI (Payment Card Industry) Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) on October 28 was by no means an unanticipated event–yet industry buzz indicates that it has stirred up considerable retailer concern about many related issues. If you’re among the crowd, you can stop and take a deep breath—there’s nothing to fear.

For example, using the point of sale system to send newsletters and other email communications to customers is a great way to remind them that you’re around and to provide them with helpful information that will lead them back to your store or restaurant time and time again.

You can’t run from it: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social networking tools are everywhere these days. They’ve even made a movie about it: “The Social Network”, the story of the Harvard University students who launched Facebook, premiered in theaters on October 1. Yet you still may ask why you, as a retailer or restaurant […]

With such a solution in place, you can set mass updating of prices to occur on a set schedule. You can also select a department, a list of items or items with specific properties and effortlessly set price changes to reflect increases, decreases, sales, special offers (like “buy two, get one free” or “buy a pound, get the second pound free”) and more—

Some point of sale software, such as Version 12.5 of Cash Register Express from pcAmerica, integrates with certain vendors’ scale software to the extent that price updates can be sent to scales automatically rather than programmed in separately.

It’s the law: Neither retailers nor restaurateurs can sell or serve age-restricted items, including tobacco, liquor and gambling products, without first verifying the customers’ age. Those that disobey the law, intentionally or otherwise, face stiff fines if caught—and even put themselves at risk of seeing their businesses shut down.

Integration of point of sale systems with video surveillance of any kind benefits retailers and restaurateurs by enabling them to put a “face” to suspicious activity–for example, pairing images of a clerk placing only a portion of the cash from a particular transaction in the till and pocketing the rest with data on the transaction that supposedly occurred.

Under the newest regulations set forth in the PCI-DSS, retailers and restaurateurs must adhere to what is known as the PCI Pin Entry Device (PED) standard. To toe the mark, they can only use PIN pads that meet the Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES) and, as such, incorporate TDES (aka 3DES) encryption keys.

Such offerings as Version 12.5 of Cash Register Express retail point of sale software and Restaurant Pro Express point of sale software, new from pcAmerica, enable retailers and restaurateurs to e-mail receipts to their customers–an entirely welcome ‘green‘ alternative to paper-based documents.

Consider, for instance, a “combo meal” feature. Such a feature guides cashiers through the steps entailed in taking orders for “combination” meals, saving time and increasing order accuracy. Individual items that are ordered separately may be “packaged” together so customers can receive an automatically calculated discount, without adding any time to the process or introducing any margin for error.