Cus­tomers of Massy Stores can rest as­sured that their per­son­al bank­ing in­for­ma­tion was not com­pro­mised fol­low­ing a hack at­tack ear­li­er this year, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Rox­ane de Fre­itas has said.

On April 28, Massy Stores and Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced a cy­ber-se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dent.

“That ob­vi­ous­ly was not a good thing for us. We are very dis­ap­point­ed about what hap­pened how­ev­er we con­tin­ue to man­age through the sit­u­a­tion. What we can say is that cus­tomer in­for­ma­tion was not...we don’t keep that so none of that was re­leased or re­vealed and our sys­tems are back up and run­ning, and we are safe again,” de Fre­itas said.

Massy Stores’ Chief dig­i­tal and in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Kevon Jack fur­ther ex­plained that in par­tic­u­lar cred­it card in­for­ma­tion could not be ac­cessed.

“It is im­por­tant for us to no­tice that even though our sys­tems are in­te­grat­ed in­to the bank sys­tem, we don’t store cred­it card in­for­ma­tion. That is not some­thing that we do or will do go­ing for­ward or any time. The tech­nol­o­gy al­lows us to talk to the bank’s net­work with­out stor­ing any of your per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, your cred­it card in­for­ma­tion on the net­work. That has been test­ed. If you go to any of our stores you would no­tice that all of our reg­is­ters are in­te­grat­ed in­to the bank’s net­work. So it’s im­por­tant to note that we don’t store cred­it card in­for­ma­tion,” Jack said.

De Fre­itas and Jack made the com­ments as Massy Stores launched a new self-check­out ser­vice at its Brent­wood lo­ca­tion.

Massy stat­ed that the new self-check­out ser­vice was in­tro­duced in an ef­fort to of­fer cus­tomers a more con­trol, con­ve­nience and a speed­i­er op­tion.

Self-check­out lanes are al­so cur­rent­ly op­er­a­tional at the Trinci­ty lo­ca­tion and will be ful­ly op­er­a­tional by De­cem­ber 1 at the West­moor­ings lo­ca­tion. Speak­ing at the launch at Brent­wood yes­ter­day where cus­tomers were treat­ed to an in-store ex­pe­ri­ence, de Fre­itas said the new self-check­out units are synced with point-of-sale units and of­fer a more seam­less ex­pe­ri­ence than the pre­vi­ous mod­el.

“It al­so takes up less space in the store and is eas­i­er to man­age by our sup­port team. Cus­tomers are as­sured that the ex­pe­ri­ence is se­cure as there will be sur­veil­lance cam­eras re­view­ing every as­pect of the trans­ac­tion, and there is an as­signed at­ten­dant con­sis­tent­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sys­tem,” she said.

“Brent­wood, as one of our newest lo­ca­tions was built with this fea­ture in mind, and while it is a large­ly self-man­aged ser­vice, at­ten­dants will al­so be avail­able to sup­port cus­tomers if re­quired. They will as­sist cus­tomers with tak­ing them through the process or an­swer­ing any ques­tions they may have,” de Fre­itas said.

She ex­plained the new self-check­out tech­nol­o­gy was the re­sult of a pi­lot pro­gramme im­ple­ment­ed in Gulf View four years ago where cus­tomers re­spond­ed favourably.

“Gulf View was our pi­lot and as with any­thing you learn the chal­lenges and so we have tak­en the learn­ings from Gulf View, and have wait­ed to get the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy, equip­ment, soft­ware and ma­chin­ery. These new ma­chines have cam­eras all around which we have cho­sen to in­vest in. With the im­pact of COVID-19 a lot of the equip­ment in­stal­la­tion was held back so we have just re­ceived them, and we are in the process of rolling out,” she said.

For those cus­tomers who are hes­i­tant about us­ing the new self-check­outs, de Fre­itas said its time to em­brace the tech­nol­o­gy,

“We all got used to us­ing our mo­bile phones, ATMs and mo­bile bank­ing so this is an­oth­er step in that di­rec­tion, and it al­lows you to con­trol that trans­ac­tion and you can al­so scan your Massy Card so you can get your points. It’s a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed sys­tem.”

She con­firmed that the Massy Stores in Guyana, St Lu­cia and Bar­ba­dos will al­so be out­fit­ted with the new self-check­out ser­vice in the com­ing year.

Dur­ing to­day’s launch at Brent­wood, DJs Ana and Ul­tra Sim­mo pro­vid­ed en­ter­tain­ment and cus­tomers were treat­ed to store give-aways.