Phone
Card Activation at POS
TeleCheck recently
announ-ced that they have united with Zenex Communica-tion (a phone
card supplier and subsidiary of First Data Corpor-ation) to make
prepaid phone cards easier for merchants. The Tele-Check/Zenex
agreement allows merchants to activate the cards at the point-of-sale
using Tele-Check's Accelera terminal. With Accelera, merchants pay
for the phone cards after they are activated and can also add more
minutes to the card. There are also plans to use the terminal to
purchase prepaid cellular minutes.
As you may know, this
isn't anything new. Lipman USA has had card activation available on
their equipment for some time. Phone card activation is one of the
many features that Lipman believes will allow a retailer to recoup
their investment in Nurit hardware, by putting the POS terminal to
work on other tasks besides payment authorizations. In the case of
the Lipman, residuals on activation are also available through a
program established for ISOs. Of course, you are also free to take
advantage of the card activation capabilities of a Nurit terminal and
establish your own phone card contract and residual
opportunity.
Why is any of this
important, you ask? Well, until now, merchants could only order
previously activated cards, keep them secured under lock and key, and
pay for them after selling them. Or, they could pay up front for
inactive cards and activate them upon sale.
For more information
about TeleCheck and the Zenex agreement, access their Web site at
http://www.telecheck.com. You can find out more about Nurit terminal
capabilities from Lipman USA at www.lipmanusa.com.
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