LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Starting next October, pay-at-the-pump gasoline stations must have the ability to process EMV credit cards. Mike Coulson, chairman of Coulson Oil Co., recently told the Little Rock Rotary Club that will mean many gasoline retailers will have to shell out thousands of dollars in expensive upgrades, Arkansas Business reports.

Because EMV credit cards have an embedded chip instead of a magnetic strip, a different card-reading system is required for usage. Coulson pointed out that will require gasoline pumps older than a decade to be replaced to accommodate the new technology necessary to read EMV credit cards.

With new pumps costing upwards of $20,000 each, that’s an expensive proposition for retailers. “Some stations are just going to duct tape the card slots on the old machines and say come inside and pay,” Coulson said. “But that’s not very convenient for the customers.”

Coulson also talked about the industry-wide trend of locations larger than the traditional small, four-pump stores. The “bigger box” stores have begun to pop up all over the country, often undercutting smaller retailers because of more volume and pumps.

Those changes also underscore the striking changes in the oil industry during the last four decades. “If you go back 40 years, the U.S. was running out of oil,” he said. “The U.S. is now the world’s leading crude oil producer. We don’t need it from anyone else.”

That has made for an interesting ride of late, with crude oil prices falling rapidly and only now beginning to climb back up a bit. “Gasoline prices rise like a rocket and fall like a feather,” Coulson said. “Now we know our competitors' prices without having to drive by like we did 20 years ago. The prices are changing every day.”