Page 40 - GS190802

Education

What's not to like about cloud Oversimplifying the message

thrives in popular culture, it's highly
By Hervé Sinelle-Botinelly Even though the term cloud now
AEVI debatable how many small business
merchants really have a firm ground-
cross every industry, it seems the word "cloud" represents the magi- ing in what it means. In our haste to
cal elixir for marketing programs. Cloud, often referred to as "the simplify our messages to merchants,
cloud" is indeed the underpinning of new architectures to deliver solution providers shouldn't oversim-
A new benefits, but a good deal of marketing these days relies on plify what they're delivering while
hazy, blanket terms that fail to communicate the actual value being delivered. obscuring some clear benefits of pay-
The payments industry is as guilty as any other, and this risks confusing or ments in the cloud.
alienating merchants.
For the merchant, the new technology
You can hardly turn a corner in our industry without running into "cloud revolution is really about what is hap-
POS" or "cloud-based POS." The number of available solutions is huge, but few pening on their countertop or por-
companies selling them do a good job of communicating what it is that cloud table card acceptance device. What
brings to the merchant countertop. Just about all they can agree on is that they traditionally is the point of sale (POS)
are better than the legacy countertop terminals and semi-integrated solutions is being transformed into a dynamic
that merchants have traditionally relied on to process card transactions. point of interaction (POI) where pay-
ment can sit beside value-added ap-
Most of the solutions, as described today, seem to conflate payments and value- plications and services, ranging from
added applications and services as one solution. This is misleading at best and loyalty programs, to scheduling, to
risks stoking misunderstanding and distrust among merchants. instant credit applications and ap-
proval.

Instead of viewing card acceptance
as a cost center, new smart POS sys-
tems can turn the POI into a revenue
generator that provides an improved
consumer experience that keeps buy-
ers coming back to a merchant. The
cloud plays a role in that, for sure, by
providing a better communications
medium than telephone lines, but it's
not the magic elixir that it is made out
to be.
Selling the real benefits

It is the intelligence on the device,
combined with open systems that
spur development of third-party ap-
plications, along with your market
expertise, that create the real magic.
That is the story acquirers and solu-
tion providers should be selling.
Where cloud really comes into play is
by making infrastructure less costly.
By shifting transactions from private
data centers to cloud-based data cen-
ters, processors are able to minimize
their costs for hardware, software,
networks and support staff. In par-
ticular, they can now offset the grow-
ing costs of security to cloud services
providers. Processors, in turn, are
able to shift their focus away from in-
frastructure maintenance and focus

40