CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — An Exxon-branded Cruizers convenience store in Wake Forest, N.C., has successfully enabled EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) chip payments on Gilbarco Veeder-Root’s FlexPay payment terminals across the First Data network on its Encore fuel dispensers.

Holmes Oil—which operates 25 Cruizers convenience stores in North Carolina—is an early participant in updating its forecourt equipment for EMV.

“Gilbarco has been a long-term partner of ours,” said Edward Holmes, CEO of Holmes Oil. “They have been leading the industry on EMV—both indoor and outdoor—and we’re excited to be among the very first to turn on chip payments at the pump, just as we were among the first to turn EMV on inside the store with their Passport point-of-sale system. It’s our feeling that as consumers become used to paying with chip cards for indoor transactions, and the news continues to highlight payment security risks, sites with EMV ‘turned on’ will be preferred to those that don’t accept chip cards.”

“Holmes Oil’s drive to enable EMV at its forecourts will ultimately set them apart from the competition,” said Mark Williams, vice president of North America marketing for Gilbarco. “Gilbarco is happy to be their one-stop shop to help provide safe and efficient payment transactions for its customers, both inside the store and at the pump.”

With headquarters in Chapel Hill, N.C., Cruizers Convenience Marketplace is a division of the Holmes Oil Co. and a distributor of ExxonMobil and Valero fuels. It operates 25 Cruizers Convenience Marketplace locations in central North Carolina.

Greensboro, N.C.-based Gilbarco Veeder-Root supplies retail and commercial fueling operations, offering a range of integrated technology solutions, from the forecourt to the convenience store and head office. Major product lines include fuel dispensers, pump media, POS systems, payment systems, tank gauges, software development and integration, fleet-management systems, and nozzles.