For many independent gas stations, gas station chains, convenience stores and grocery stores, selling both gasoline and merchandise has become a competitive weapon as well as a way to bolster productivity. But while it is not difficult to persuade consumers to fill up the gas tank while simultaneously making a food purchase (or vice versa), managing these different facets of the business can be challenging on many levels.

The most comprehensive end-to-end security solution available today, the IPAD ® SC helps merchants and restaurateurs prevent personal cardholder data breaches, without compromising the speed and convenience of customer transactions. Here’s how:

pcAmerica has the technology that can get you started with social marketing, using solutions from behind the counter.

Additionally, under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed by Congress in 2010, retailers and restaurant owners can set minimum price levels for the use of credit cards in their establishments. The minimum must be under $10. Why bother? The transaction fees operators pay to process really small purchases—say, below $5—essentially cancel out the profit from the sale.

Using PCI-compliant technology at the physical point of sale constitutes PCI compliance by default. While this may be the case, remember that PCI guidelines also require the implementation of measures to ensure the physical security of networks and payment technology as well as the maintenance of written security policies. Although it is critical that terminals and other point of sale hardware be PCI- compliant, compliance as a whole doesn’t stop there.

A few months back, we explained why it’s important for retailers and restaurant operators to blog just as we at pcAmerica do. We hope you took our advice! Now it’s time to look at a few ways to prevent your blog from becoming stale and, as a result, losing some of its following. Here are three strategies to start with; see our next installment for more ideas.

In the last installment of this blog, we at pcAmerica offered three strategies for keeping customers coming back. Here are three more.

With consumers continuing to watch their budgets and those who are spending more freely again, becoming increasingly selective about where they put their money down, retailers and restaurant operators must double their efforts to keep customers coming back. Here are a few strategies for moving in that direction:

As a retailer or restaurateur, you can be just as innovative, even at the point of sale. Retailers might take a page from the book of Best Buy, which last year began putting QR codes on shelf signs to give shoppers more information about the products displayed at the moment of decision.

“QR” is short for “quick response”, and QR codes are, in basic terms, two-dimensional bar codes that closely resemble the ones to which we’ve all become accustomed. However, QR codes pack so much more power than their simpler bar code “cousins”.