Point of sale manufacturer ViVOtech announced the availability of a new POS terminal for payments and NFC mobile commerce. The company said its ViVOpay 8100 terminals, which accept traditional swipe cards with magnetic stripes, chip cards, contactless cards and NFC-enabled mobile phones, could save merchants more than $2 billion a year in PCI-DSS validation fees thanks to Visa's expansion of its TIP initiative.

Visa recently announced its TIP initiative will now cover merchants in the U.S. that process at least 75 percent of their Visa transactions through secure chip-enabled terminals like the ViVOpay 8100. These qualifying merchants are not required to validate their compliance to the PCI Data Security Standard annually.

According to the Smart Card Alliance, annual PCI-DSS fraud-protection validations cost businesses more than $2 billion a year.

"Viva Visa!" said Michael (Mick) Mullagh, CEO of ViVOtech, in the announcement. "It's about time the U.S. joins the rest of the world, which has been using highly secure contact and contactless chip technology for nearly a decade."

Mullagh said ViVOtech applauds Visa's efforts to advance the adoption EMV technologies in the U.S.

According to the announcement, the ViVOpay 8100 also includes ViVOtech NFC checkout technology that enables merchants to accept and process coupons, personalized offers, loyalty programs and payments through the merchant's proprietary mobile applications.

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