Richard Del Valle, director of Restaurant Systems for Friendly Ice Cream Corp., voiced concerns during an FSTEC 2010 panel that Payment Card Industry policy makers could force a dramatic change in the way restaurants conduct business. Restaurants are one of the few retail environments where a customer hands a credit card to a complete stranger, and then the stranger temporarily disappears with the card, he said.
Given the potential for theft, Del Valle worried that PCI regulators might eventually require that foodservice operators process their credit card transactions at the table.
Tom Lindblom, vice president and CTO for CKE Restaurants Inc., agreed, saying there was a tendency toward not asking consumers to surrender their cards. One solution, he indicated, might be through the use of swipe devices at the table.
