News

PayPoint has announced a new partnership with the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) to make their Assured Advice programme available to all retailers via their PayPoint One platform. Retailers can access industry leading support on all aspects of regulatory compliance for onvenience retailing via their device or the PayPoint website. ACS is the voice of over 33,500 local shops and offers comprehensive advice as part of their Assured Advice guides and Training Scheme.

ACS is delighted to announce that symbol group Select & Save has joined ACS as retail members.

Select & Save was formed in 1997. Since its launch,  the convenience store symbol group for independent retailers has grown from 2 stores to over 100 across the UK, and is still growing. Select & Save retailers are supported by its central office in Birmingham. The group recently announced a deal with Bestway Wholesale to receive ambient, BWS, fresh and chilled deliveries from the Bestway Wholesale nationwide depot network.

ACS is advising members to prepare for new rules that will stop them from charging customers to use credit or debit cards in store. Current EU rules prohibit businesses from charging customers more than the costs of offering card payments, but will now go further by banning surcharging completely, so retailers have to offer the same price regardless of the means of payment.

One of the fun if slightly surreal parts of my job is responding to members and others asking me to forecast what’s going to happen next in politics.  Such forecasts are always a bit of guesswork, and the best anyone can really do is analyse the factors at play and come up with some sort of rationale for what might happen next.  I also have a rule that if you want to know what’s likely to happen in an election, listen to the person least connected with the Westminster village where rumours and granular message crafting and media spin cloud the fundamentals of how people in the country at la

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the past twelve months, and we usually see plenty of superlatives from experts and commentators hailing the most significant change, the biggest, most profound impacts on the future.  2017, though, might just have earned the hyperbole where the convenience store sector is concerned. 

ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) has responded to the publication of an Environmental Audit Committee report which calls for the introduction of a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles, urging the Government to consider the impact that DRS would have on small retailers.

Nutritional snack brand Pulsin is celebrating becoming the latest supplier member of the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS).  

British-based snack and protein powder company Pulsin, www.pulsin.co.uk, has become the latest supplier member of the Association of Convenience Stores. The brand recently celebrated its 10^th anniversary with a major rebrand. 

ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) has welcomed an announcement from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which will ensure that everyone in the UK will be able to request high speed broadband by 2020.

In the 2017 Rural Shop Report, ACS highlighted the problems that retailers – especially the 19,000 convenience stores in rural areas - face when trying to invest in their business with substandard broadband speeds and called for the Government to deliver the Universal Service Obligation at a minimum spend of 10mbps.

ACS has welcomed Ofgem’s proposals to introduce a new 12-month backbilling limit for microbusinesses in response to their consultation on protecting non-domestic consumers who receive backbills.

The consultation follows ACS’ calls earlier this year for the regulator to take a more active role in protecting microbusinesses from lengthy backbills.

ACS has written to Nicky Morgan MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, calling for the Committee and the Payment Systems Regulator to carefully scrutinise LINK’s plans to reduce interchange fees for ATMs.

In the letter, ACS expresses scepticism at LINK’s claims that they intend to ‘retain an extensive network of free ATMs for consumers’, as a cut in the interchange fee would inevitably lead to a decline in the number of cash machines available for consumers.