LITTLE ROCK – Small Arkansas retailers say they’re going to have to shell out big bucks to comply with new rules of credit-card companies requiring automated gasoline pumps to be able to recognize personal-identification numbers of debit-card users.

Bruce Gibson of Gibson Oil Co. in northeast Arkansas said the cost to upgrade equipment at the pumps will run $20,000 to $80,000 per store.

Nick Siddique, owner of five Shell stations in Little Rock, North Little Rock and White Hall, said the upgrade would cost $3,000 for each of his 32 pumps, a total of $96,000. He said he’ll probably stop allowing debit-card purchases at those pumps.

That would mean that gasoline customers with debit cards who are accustomed to paying at the pump would have to go into the store.

Siddique says the card companies should pay for the upgrades, not the stores.

“For the big (retailers) it’s not a problem,” he said. “But for a small guy like us it is.”

The upgrades are intended to protect against theft of credit- and debit-card information. They were recommended by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Council, formed three years ago by the five major credit-card companies.

Visa has set a July 1, 2010, deadline for small retailers to conform with the debit-card standard affecting the equipment at gasoline pumps.

PIN debit-card transactions surpassed the number of U.S. credit-card transactions in 2006, according to Hitachi Consulting of Dallas. From 2006 to 2007, such transactions increased 12.5 percent, Hitachi said.

Gibson said profit margins are very small on gasoline sales.

“For (retailers) to have to spend money they can’t recoup is really hurting them,” he said.

He said he plans to pay for the security upgrades at seven stores he owns, but said some of the operators at 80 more stores he services might not.

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Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.arkansasonline.com