Page 22 - GS210301

CoverStory

with Amadis and Worldline about three years ago." Haydont concurred, stating, franchisee owned; we don't have any
"In Europe, Subway was a very interesting project and it was the first time an corporate stores. Vendors need the
international retailer restaurant organization adopted a global standard to ad- banking rights to settle in franchisor
dress problems with global international deployments." bank accounts."
Globalization, interoperability Fortunately, working with Amadis

Lamoureux acknowledged that having to transact and negotiate contracts in and Worldline facilitated harmo-
a fragmented market made international deployment especially challenging. nized, cross-border payments accep-
"Europe has so many different languages and vendors may claim that they are tance, Lamoureux stated, while help-
global, but that is not always the case," he said. "Subway's base is 100 percent ing to address key technical issues
without burdensome proprietary
protocols or certification processes.
Implementing nexo standards Re-
tailer Protocol provided the partners
with simple, clearly defined inter-
faces across payment applications,
loyalty programs and POS systems
and used a common approach for all
types of POS infrastructures.

Stijn Gasthuys, vice president, global
sales and verticals, merchant ser-
vices at Worldline Global, noted that
Worldline supported the Subway
rollout to thousands of franchisors
in 15 countries, including Spain,
Norway, Ireland and Bulgaria, an ex-
pansive scope with myriad languag-
es and local specificities. "Without
us, there would have been 15 local
projects, each with different stan-
dards and challenges," he said. "And
when you work in the quick service
restaurant business like Subway, it's
important to package the offer in a
clear way, with payment devices,
transaction flows and ecommerce
made simple, clear and cost-effec-
tive, with little upfront investment."

Gasthuys further noted that lever-
aging the nexo standard made solu-
tions easy to integrate and plug-and-
play for restaurant owners. An on-
boarding portal enabled franchisors
to download and upload documents
to activate their payment systems.
Packaging, standardization and on-
boarding were the secret sauce that
made the project a success, he stated.
Partner-driven

"Retailers around the world have
been great partners for NCR,"
Wilkinson said. "They help us test
new technologies and ask us to help
them innovate, whether it's inte-
grating mobile apps or providing
self-checkout in stores. What a great

22