Firms ready for smart cards?

Liz Moore has lots to worry about as she juggles the many duties necessary to keep her popular downtown lunch counter, Bluebird Kitchen, running at a perfect simmer. This fall, Moore has one more thing to add to her worry list: a looming deadline for accepting chip-enabled smart cards that has caught her and many other small-business owners unaware and unprepared. Oct. 1 is the date set by the U.S. payments industry for banks to finish replacing credit and debit cards that use the old magnetic stripe technology with more secure smart cards sporting microchips.