Conexxus In the News

The theme at this year’s Conexxus Annual Conference was clear: Disrupt your business or be disrupted.  Not only are competitors such as dollar stores and online retailers increasingly encroaching on the convenience-store retailing business but a new definition of convenience is rising among consumers, and that will affect their expectations of c-stores.  “I don’t think Amazon is coming after my business, but I think they’re training consumers to shop differently,” said Kevin Smartt, CEO of Kwik Chek, Austin, Texas.  From a rock ‘n' roll star turned missile defense expert for the U.S. military to a representative from the Illinois state government explaining the potential of blockchain for c-stores and American society, the speakers at the technology-standards conference, held April 30 through May 3, embodied this push to think differently about the industry.

Here are nine highlights from the 2018 Conexxus conference.....

Vish Ganapathy of Accenture shares insights on why convenience retailers must use technology to change their business models.  “Technology is easy,” said Ganapathy. “It’s the people and the process that are hard. It’s not mobile and drones or IoT that are disrupting. It’s people who bring disintermediation to your value chain that is going to be disruptive.”  Noting that retailers today spend a lot of time focusing on the customer experience, Ganapathy said that  if they are not also focusing on the business model and the value chain, then the overall customer experience will be like putting lipstick on a pig. “It’s not going to be sustainable. You have to think about how your value chain is being disrupted.....

Jeffrey "Skunk" Baxter is best known for jamming on the guitar for the Doobie Brothers but, in more recent years, he’s become a well-regarded national security expert, using insights gleaned from his music career to provide outside-the-box thinking.  It’s that sort of thinking that Baxter encouraged convenience store retailers to embrace during his keynote address at the 2018 Conexxus Annual Conference.  Baxter advised the convenience store retailers in attendance to "show there's another answer to the solution" and "find people who are like-minded" when they want to generate ideas from people who might be prone to confirmation biases.....

Impact 21, a global retail consulting, analytics, and services company, is pleased to announce its co-founder and president, Lisa Stewart, will be instated as the 2018 Conexxus Hall of Fame inductee. "Lisa has devoted so much of her career to benefitting the industry's evolution to management excellence," said Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus. "I have worked with Lisa for literally decades and found no other person more focused on the operational excellence of our industry." .....

Since the EMV liability shift in October 2015, the way people pay for items on a daily basis has changed a lot. Now, chip-and-PIN transactions are the norm and most people use the relatively new payment platform regularly, thanks to a heavy push from both card issuers and retailers. More than two years since that liability shift went into effect, it’s important for businesses at all points in the payments ecosystem to consider what’s different, and what’s next.  “Now is not the time to take your foot off the gas with regard to EMV,” Linda Toth, director of standards at Conexxus, said at a recent NACS conference.....

Newly released white paper shares information and resources for convenience retailers who are considering whether to implement EMV.  

​ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Conexxus,  has released a new white paper “Resources and Guidance for EMV Implementation in a C-Store Environment.”  This paper brings together educational information, frequently asked questions, and links to valuable resources for convenience store operators who are looking to implement EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) in the United States. While many EMV resources exist, the resource links included in the document were found to be the most helpful and relevant to merchants in the convenience and fuel retailing industry..... 

Conexxus has joined ENVCo's Associates Program as a new Business Associate. Participation at this level is available to organizations with direct responsibility for an EMV transaction at any point in the transaction lifecycle. These companies can provide input on strategic and business topics related to the use of the EMV Specifications.....

Last week during the NACS Show, TechEdge speakers and payment experts Linda Toth, director of standards at Conexxus; Kara Gunderson, POS manager at CITGO Petroleum; and Mike Lindberg, payment solutions director at CHS/Cenex; presented an education session on EMV, payments and data security.  During the “Leveraging Data Security Technology” session, Toth kicked off the EMV discussion by explaining .....

Representatives from technology standards group Conexxus gave Chicago’s NACS Show 2017 attendees a sobering but informative picture of the state of cybersecurity and payments in retail. “There is no silver bullet. It’s an effort that’s going to ....

In a session entitled “Tech Edge: Protect Yourself from Data Breaches,” and moderated by Gray Taylor, executive director of tech think group Conexxus, two industry experts provided a glimpse of how cyberattacks are quickly changing the shape of data security and some straightforward tips on how retailers can better protect themselves. Even though data breach cases are generating bigger headlines, common sense solutions still can be employed to help retailers safeguard their data, and the data of their customers.....