Disabling Signature and Pin For Shift4 Merchants

Posted by Dawn Dawning, Training Specialist

Yet another way to prepare for social distancing at POS is to eliminate the need for customers to enter a PIN or to capture a signature when processing card payments through your EMV payment devices.

Disabling the Signature Capture Required Threshold in TAM

This is accomplished by defining a threshold at which signature capture is required in TAM.  Important! Before changing these thresholds or disabling signature capture, always check with your financial institutions for the applicable threshold requirements (both bank and governmental). There may be liability implications to changing this threshold amount. If the merchant allows the cardholder to bypass their signature, then fraud liability might shift back to you, the merchant.

1. Log into TAM Office select Point of Sale and Tenders.
2. Once the Tenders screen opens, highlight and double-click on a Credit Card Tender (American Express, Discover, Mastercard/Visa).
3. Enter a threshold of 9,999 in the Require Signature Threshold Amount
4. Click Update to save your changes.
5. If licensed for multiple locations on one database, system will display additional prompt apply update to all locations
   1. Click Yes to apply it to all locations.
   2. Click No to apply update to single location.
6. Repeat until all credit card signature thresholds have been updated.

The threshold amount should be set to your specific financial institution’s current and on-going guidelines.  Adjusting the threshold per the above instructions will automatically by-pass the capturing of the customer’s signature for all credit card payments under $9,999.

Disabling Pin for Shift4 Merchants

This is accomplished by enabling an option to bypass PIN entry, typically set by communication with the payment card middleware.  Important! Before changing this option, always check with your financial institutions for PIN entry requirements (both bank and governmental).  There may be liability shift implications to enabling this option if the issuer has provided the card a higher level of EMV authentication by enabling PIN. If the merchant allows the cardholder to bypass entering their PIN, then the fraud liability might shift back to you, the merchant.

Disabling PIN Bypass in Shift4 is done via several steps in the Lighthouse Transaction Manager portal. Changing the option is described on page 7 of the using emv devices with shift4.pdf document available from Shift4.  If you do not have this PDF document, it can be download by clicking here or viewed below. To disable:

1. Log into the shift4 portal as an administrator.
2. Go to EMV Settings
   1. Select the EMV you wish to disable the PIN on by pressing the number in blue (some areas are marked black due to sensitive information).
   2. Uncheck the signature. This removes signature capture on the PIN Pad (If you did this within TAM you can skip this step).
   3. Check PIN bypass as this bypasses the prompt for a PIN on a debit card
   4. Check the No CVM as this disables the prompt for PIN for any other cards that is not a debit card. An example would be an American express credit card that has a PIN to charge the card as credit.
3. Open Services on each computer that has the PIN Pad installed on.
4. Select Shift4 UTG and stop the service.
5. Open the Start Menu
6. Type in “Stand Alone”
7. Right click in the yellow box and select Device Maintenance
8. Click the combo box associated with the PIN Pad
   1. Select “Download Now” as this will download the changes you made in the portal page onto the EMV device.
9. Close out of “Stand Alone”.
10. Open Services
11. Start the shift4 UTG.

Disabling “OK” prompt for Shift4 Merchants

This is accomplished by disabling a setting within the Shift4 UTG software that will bypass the “Ok” verification prompt.

To Disable:

1. Stop the UTG2 Service
2. Next, open Shift4 Tune-Up
3. Then, select the Device Tab
4. Open Device you wish to modify.

Example below:

Keep in mind that disabling any EMV security feature may put your organization at a higher risk for potential incidents of fraud to occur. TAM cannot be held responsible for fraudulent transactions that may be processed.

Remember, we are all in this together. Stay healthy and safe. As always, if you have any questions relating to this post, please contact the Help Desk at 866-435-7826 or by email at help@tamretail.com.