Friday, April 11, 2014
Doug Dwyre came to Transact 14 to reinforce mocapay's relationships with its channel partners. Dwyre said the goal of the Denver-based firm is to make mobile payment acceptance easier for merchants, ISOs and processors. He said mocapay's approach to the market is unique because the mocapay app is merchant-branded, unlike the app offerings from TabbedOut and LevelUp, for example.
In addition, clerks using mocapay's app at the POS need only enter a customer's cell phone number, and mocapay does all the legwork behind the scenes to make the app work, Dwyre stated. He also noted that mocapay is a true payment gateway that works with industry incumbents rather than trying to "disintermediate" them.
To that end, the mocapay app is integrated with Chase Paymentech, Mercury Payment Systems and First Data Corp., and can securely handle any type of transaction – gift card, coupon, loyalty, debit or credit cards, even decoupled debit.
Way up on the 28th floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino, TouchSuite executives Farshad Tafazzoli, Chief Products & Marketing Officer; Mike DePinto, Executive Vice President; and Gary Breeds, Business Development Manager, demonstrated TouchSuite's new Firefly POS system.
FireFly is the second POS system the Boca Raton, Fla.-based ISO has designed specifically for the salon vertical market. Firefly is cloud-based and, instead of running on the Windows operating system, like the company's first salon POS system, it is Android-based. For added flexibility, users can also log into the system via Android tablet or Apple iPad devices.
The system is fashioned to be highly intuitive. "We designed it so that we could sit down with our parents, who know nothing about POS systems, and they could catch on quickly, with minimal instructions," Tafazzoli said. In time, a version with some of the system's features will be available for smartphones, as well.
Among the functions demonstrated on a pleasantly uncluttered user interface were:
On the back-end, salon owners can keep track of inventory, vendors, types of services each employee and/or independent contractor offers, arrange to split transactions among multiple cards, and use TouchSuite's patented technology for processing multiple merchant identification numbers in one salon environment. Merchants can also use data on clients' past services to gear offers specifically to them, Breeds noted.
Some POS products are generic, while FireFly is a "category killer," Tafazzoli said, adding that once salon owners start using it, "they're going to love it."
Bill Clark helped kick off the ETAU (short for ETA University) sessions for Transact 14 by joining a panel at 9 a.m. on April 8. The topic was mobile, POS and Main Street realities. Clark reported that the panel covered big data and marketing, use of consumer metrics and related issues. And, yes, people straggled in a bit for the first few minutes, but by the time the panel really got rolling, the event was well attended, he said.
Clark founded Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Spindle three years ago "to drive mobile commerce with a new, fresh approach" by combining mobile marketing with payment processing. Recently, Spindle acquired Yowza!! (Yowza International Inc.), a coupon offering platform used at 95,000 merchant outlets, with an app downloaded by 2 million consumers, Clark noted. Soon to come will be a software-as-a-service mobile wallet.
Clark was at Transact 14 to connect with resellers and partners. "It seems natural ISOs and agents would be interested in selling [Spindle] the same as they'd sell a VeriFone terminal or any other platform," he said. "It's a revenue generator – new to market – and, bundled with mobile marketing, can be sold as a package."
He added that there will need to be deeper involvement with merchants at the POS in order for mobile wallets to take hold as a payment mechanism, and that mobile phones are far better authentication devices than plastic cards.
While many Transact 14 attendees were contemplating what to have for breakfast Wednesday morning, First Data Corp. President Guy Chiarelli already had several meetings under his belt, with many more planned for the day. He believes the mega processor has been so dramatically transformed in the last year that he refers to it as "the new First Data."
The company is now "tapping into Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley innovation and technology for small and medium-size businesses, trying to be sure that everything is secure from the start, and focused on small-business owners being able to grow their business in a simple and understandable way," Chiarelli said.
In addition to one-on-one executive meetings, First Data hosted a dinner Tuesday night for more than 200 ISOs to share the company's new small business solutions strategy. Integral to this strategy is Clover Station, a new POS and business management solution for merchants. The platform includes a "slick and sleek POS device that has end-to-end security" so all the issues in retail around protection at the POS, recently evidenced by the recent Target Brands Inc. breach, are all taken care of within this product suite, Chiarelli said.
The core platform is cloud-based, with remote management and 24/7 support. Chiarelli referred to it as "small business in a box" because it comes bundled with multiple features merchants can easily employ right away. These include loyalty programs as well as real-time customer analytics that enable merchants to devise offers tailored to specific demographics or individuals based on actual customer activities and preferences.
The platform also offers an open application marketplace, so developers can design customized apps that merchants can download. Thus, with this platform, smaller merchants can now enjoy tools previously available only to midsize and larger businesses, Chiarelli noted.
The Total Merchant Services team was on hand at Transact 14 to introduce the company's new POS and marketing solution, Groovv. "Our mission is helping our customers grow and manage their business and really helping them succeed, so it was important to us to add more value to make their lives easier," said Shelley Plomske, TMS Vice President Product. "With this we are able to help our sales partners succeed in a white-label fashion."
Plomske noted that TMS provides all service and support. "We deploy it, and have on site installation where we walk merchants through how to set up and teach them about the solution's features. Our support team is available 24/7, helping them even if it's just a merchant saying, 'I need help closing my batch' or 'How do I add an item?'"
Groovv is available on a tablet, an all-in-one POS solution or a mobile device and has three different software solutions geared for different levels of business complexity. Plomske said Groovv is also intuitive and removes the barrier of intimidation associated with some systems.
Groovv's mobile and social marketing tool is designed to increase traffic and drive repeat sales, and takes the guesswork out of marketing, according to Plomske. "Using the Groovv dashboard, with one or two clicks, a merchant can choose from hundreds of offers and themes, customize an offer, preview it on a mobile website and send it out via social media, email or text message."
She noted that Groovv also gives merchants access to their data so they can tell what's selling, and from what departments, and combines that with the online transaction portal to bring all the data together. "We're moving toward a value-based solution, as opposed to just selling payments," Plomske said. "And this helps our partners become more consultative sales folks."
At Loop's booth at Transact 14, Will Wang Graylin, the company's Chief Executive Officer, had a message for The Green Sheet's audience. "We finally have a mobile commerce solution that helps incumbent acquirers to provide more value to their merchants, more security and better interactions with their consumers in a new smart wallet application that requires no changes to the existing merchant infrastructures."
This step forward is possible due to a Loop innovation called magnetic secure transmission (MST). "We've broken the last-inch problem to allow mobile devices to communicate with existing points of sale through the rails that have already been laid, which is the mag stripe communication channel," Graylin said. "We turned every POS into a contactless payment terminal."
Graylin noted that the Europay/MasterCard/Visa (EMV) train has already left the station, but it is slow moving because you have to lay the tracks while the train moves. "We are leveraging the rails that are already there for mag stripe cards, and we are simply putting the mobile payments cargo on a fast speed locomotive to get more secure transactions to their destinations faster and much cheaper."
He added that MST capability enables Loop to deliver not only the static track data commonly provided today, but also one-time dynamic track data just like EMV does; it also allows issuers to provide tokenized data from the consumer's mobile device directly back to the card issuer or the token service provider (TSP) for an end-to-end secure transaction on the existing mag stripe rails.
"We're not charging tolls to the issuers to utilize this mobile, smart wallet channel, and we're not taking away transaction revenue from the acquirers," Graylin said. "But we are allowing acquirers to offer more to their merchants and share in the revenue from delivering loyalty deals and rewards between merchants and their consumers."
According to Graylin, Loop can be put into a new smartphone for less than one dollar, and Loop is working with various device OEMs to embed Loop MST in a variety of mobile devices over the next year. "The time has finally come for consumers to have a better mobile payment experience," he said. "The great news is merchants do not have to change their infrastructure to accommodate and can leverage the new smart wallet channel to better find and keep customers."
Perspectives from more payment executives who met with The Green Sheet at the show will be posted in the coming week.
Editor's Note:
The Green Sheet Inc. is now a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals. Click here for more information.
Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact names or information may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.
