POS

POS Monitoring: Is Your Network On?

fsssiteadmin — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 11:45:58 +0000

POS Monitoring: Is Your Network On? fsssiteadmin Tue, 02/15/2022 - 17:15

With a reduction in cash and increasing digitalisation of in-store payments, the global proximity payment market size is expected to reach $26.4 billion by 2027. But the growth also brings challenges for acquirers. Most in-store merchants have multi-acquirer relationships to safeguard transaction revenue from performance slowdown or any downtime at checkout. For acquirers, a robust and well-performing POS network is foundational to capture market share and has a direct impact on transaction revenue and merchant relationships.

The more expansive the estate, the more challenging it is to support. Acquirers need to be able to monitor and control the management of POS terminals, spot problems and mediate a range of operational and business issues, ideally before it disrupts the transaction experience and impairs business performance. Critically, acquirers also need to manage application updates, comply with the latest regulation, and interchange mandates and continue to roll out new services rapidly and in parallel keep overall cost of service low. This is operationally intensive and complex, given the diversity of POS devices and the geographically distributed and extensive nature of the terminal install base.

The Shift to Intelligent Monitoring

Acquirers managing large terminal estates cannot fly blind. To achieve insight into the performance of their POS networks, acquirers need performance monitoring systems for collecting and analysing data from terminal applications. This allows operations teams detect and be alerted to and troubleshoot issues related to device and application availability or performance to improve the merchant and the end-user experience proactively and efficiently.

Many acquirers have implemented either closed-loop estate monitoring systems or a narrow set of monitoring functionality distributed across the POS Switch and processing systems to manage POS terminals. Multiple point solutions prevent operators from obtaining holistic insights into POS performance for preventative maintenance.

Real-time visibility into dynamic POS environments requires an automated and centralised system that can manage key performance indicators for the complete infrastructure spanning device, terminal application, and POS peripherals. POS estate performance monitoring software tools need to:

Support Open Standards to Manage Diverse Terminal Estate

Most acquirers manage mixed estates and have deployed a range of form factors -- fixed POS, mobile POS, Soft POS -- sourced from multiple original equipment manufacturers. At the same time, terminals from various generations coexist within the same estate and terminal apps running on these devices are developed by third-party suppliers (either from the manufacturer or specialized companies) and are not standardised.

Open standard protocols such as Nexo provide an interface between a Terminal Management System (TMS) and the payment acceptance device. The protocol supports the functions for configuring, managing, and maintaining the application parameters, the software, and the security keys of a payment system. The open, universal, TMS standard prevents vendor-lock-in and helps acquirers achieve a clear independence between terminals on the field and their remote management and control. Additionally, many estate managers have existing point solutions to monitor their estate. The centralised estate management system needs to be compatible with existing devices to derive synergies from new and existing solutions.

Provide Comprehensive Management Control

In addition to terminal monitoring, estate management spans a comprehensive range of functionality that allows technical teams to undertake a range of tasks -- update a newer EMV, schedule seasonal advertising, or track terminals for a P2PE validated solution. Specifically, this include:

Software application uploads and updates: Remotely upgrade terminal application. As an example, application OS updates or a change in the terminal configuration
Compliance with regulatory mandates - Upgrade an entire estate at once to comply with regulatory mandates, for example PCI updates
Remote key injection: Update terminal keys to protect the data exchange by the terminal with its external environment
Risk management: Assess risk at per terminal and merchant level, leveraging real-time and historical quality of service data
Campaign management: Send offers to merchants to drive transaction volume – e.g., lower merchant discount rates for festive seasons

Support Intelligent Data Capabilities

The earlier differentiator among estate management solutions, namely that proprietary agents could monitor applications, is shifting to analysing data collected by tools. Furthermore, the analytic capabilities of modern estate management tools should expand to aggregating and analysing data from transacting systems. This enables business and operations and monitoring teams to discover unexpected patterns in high-volume, multidimensional datasets and fine-tune performance.

Offer Flexible Commercial Models

Acquirers can leverage As-a-Service, subscription-based model to avoid being burdened with unpredictable and rising operational expenditure and the recruitment and retention of specialist personnel. Additional benefits of an As-a-Service model include the ability to rapidly comply with new developments such as terminal support for contactless payments, and evolving demands of regulators and card systems. This allows acquirers to focus resources on their core business instead of getting caught up with maintaining their payment tech.

FSS Terminal Estate Management

FSS estate management solution is a centralised solution designed to help merchants and acquirers’ control and monitor their terminal fleet remotely. FSS offers a comprehensive set of functionalities including performance monitoring, remote diagnostics and updates, and terminal lifecycle management. These high-performing functionalities facilitate proactive and preventive estate management - enabling acquirers to gain significant revenue and operating efficiencies.

Soft POS – Revolutionising Merchant Payments

fsssiteadmin — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 08:10:37 +0000

Soft POS – Revolutionising Merchant Payments fsssiteadmin Mon, 01/31/2022 - 13:40

Contactless payments are on an upward trajectory owing to the emergence of innovative payment systems, progressive regulatory mandates related to increase in transaction thresholds and transaction fee waiver for merchants and growing consumer preference for greater convenience. The pandemic has further accelerated the trend, with consumers and merchants, both more eager than ever, to adopt touch-free payment methods. India’s, unique, secure, and interoperable real-time Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for retail payments transactions, for instance, shows a clear trend of increasing adoption. The total number of UPI transactions crossed the 3 billion monthly milestone in 2021. Likewise, in several markets – Sri Lanka, Egypt, and Indonesia – lightweight acceptance infrastructure -QR codes- has catalysed growth of contact-free in-store payments.

Acquirers that orient themselves to innovate around these needs and journeys are best positioned to win. Software Point of Sale (Soft POS) represents an incredible opportunity to connect consumer demand for contact free payments with a growing number of merchants seeking an affordable, digital-first approach to service customers.

Soft POS transforms current generation smart phones or tablets into contactless acceptance devices -- simplifying and speeding up the merchant setup process and obviating costs associated with traditional point of sale devices. According to a 2021 study by Juniper Research, the global number of smart phones being used for Soft POS payments will increase from 3.2 million in 2021 to almost 24 million in 2026.

For acquirers, Soft POS enables rapid and cost-efficient expansion of their merchant portfolio through a differentiated services offering. In emerging markets where payment acceptance infrastructure is spotty and underdeveloped, a significant base of the micro and small merchant segment remains underserved due to the fragmented nature of the market and the costs related to acquisition and servicing. Soft POS allows acquirers to bypass costs inherent in the traditional POS acquiring model and empower millions of micro and small merchants to accept digital payments. In India, for instance, there are 5 million POS devices and 200 million smart phone users. Likewise, Africa and Asia Pacific are mobile-first markets. Acquirers can tap into this delta to lower cost and access barriers and achieve economies of scale and.

With the build-out of basic payment acceptance infrastructure, Soft POS also unlocks sizeable opportunities to capture new sources of revenue from "white space" offerings. For instance, the ability to provide access to funds for “new to credit” merchant segments against card swipes on their POS terminals, which will further incentivise merchants to execute more transactions.

For large retailers, Soft POS can improve customer service experience by expediting the checkout process, as customers can simply tap their mobile devices to pay. Retailers can also experiment with a range of in-store formats -- personalised in-aisle services, curb side pick-up, queue busting – significantly elevating the in-store shopper experience.

Additionally in many emerging markets, the consumer journey begins with retailer websites and m-commerce apps but ends with payments in cash on delivery of goods and services. Tap to Phone enables merchants to digitalise these transactions and eliminate cash-handling overheads.

To better monetize their role within the value chain and deepen merchant relationships, acquirers can offer proximate services where they have a play. For each added value service, the merchant receives an additional fee per transaction, thus incentivising digital payments acceptance. Some of the VAS that can be offered includes – consumer financing at the point of sale, analytics, and utility payments.

Selecting the Soft POS Provider

Acquirers are increasingly partnering with technology service providers (TSPs), rather than building capabilities in-house, to improve agility and time to value. Acquirers need to collaborate with TSPs that offer:

Integrated solution comprising front-end application and payment processing and switching
Support multiple payment rails – cards, accounts, direct, debit – to optimise acceptance costs
Offer parametrised solution to rapidly launch and adapt new merchant propositions in response to market needs
API-driven architecture for orchestration of expansive partner ecosystems to deliver differentiated offerings
Automate merchant operations, including onboarding, risk monitoring, clearing and settlement, and dispute management
Accommodate high workloads and cost-efficiently process large volumes of transactions

FSS POS Solution

FSS offers a complete solution to merchants for POS acquiring and processing.

The Soft POS app resident on the merchant’s device enables merchants to collect payment by simply passing the customer’s contactless card over their phones, automatically processing the payment through FSS application. The Soft POS app is device agnostic and is certified for PIN on Glass entry as well as certified by Visa, MasterCard and Rupay card schemes.

The FSS system is designed for scale and can process large volumes of small value payments that will be unlocked with the growth in the acceptance network. The processing system is device agnostic, supports a range of payment acceptance modes (cards, QR, wallets), and offers direct connectivity to interchanges.

FSS lowers operating costs through automated operations. This includes payments integration, connectivity to the card and other payment rails, merchant lifecycle management including clearing and settlement dispute management, risk and fraud detection, terminal security certification and compliance. Acquirers can also monetise large sets of transactional data by sharing transactions trends and industry performance benchmarks.