McInerney emphasized that despite the ROI for updating payment terminals to support chip-card technology being unmeasurable, it is still an investment retailers need to make to protect themselves from a hefty bill in the event of a breach or fraud case. "Nobody asks you 'what is the ROI for locking your front door?'" she said, "because there simply isn’t one."

John Deery, founder of JD Associates, a Leominster, Mass.-based solution provider in the POS space, has been focusing on the opportunity surrounding the October mandate for more than a year, servicing well over 100 clients.

He says despite business being consistent and busy, he has yet to see the "summer rush" he thought there'd be as retailers began looking to upgrade their systems ahead of October.

"We've got a lot of customers that have figured it out who are ahead of the curve since we've been talking to them," he told IT Best of Breed. "We'll be hearing from [more of them] in September as they get back in gear after Labor Day… Any smart retailer will know they need to do something... It should eliminate credit card fraud."