Mobile Payment Terminal is the Star at The Ideal Home & Garden Show
A versatile, Chip & PIN ready mobile credit and debit card payment terminal has been the surprise star of this year’s Ideal Home and Garden Show, by offering exhibitors a safe and secure method of accepting card payments from visitors.
Ocius Vx670 DatasheetCompanies including Acumag, Asiapearl Lifestyle, Ceronio Designs, Fifth Avenue, Forever England, ITS Digital UK, Make A Fresh Start, The Pillow Centre, Polti, Renapur, Wellbake, Under The Moon, Sasaki International, Silver Balloon, Snowdonia Cheese Company and the Sofabed Company all utilised Ocius, developed by leading card payment processing developer Commidea.
Until now, the acceptance of credit and debit cards for these companies at shows and exhibitions had been a major stumbling block. Due to the lack of affordable and practical communication facilities, card payments are often accepted at the show or exhibition and then manually processed by the vendors on return to their head offices. It was only then that any fraudulent or failed transactions were identified, by which time it was too late to do anything as the goods had been released.
With the implementation of Chip & PIN, the exposure to fraud for certain organisations is getting greater as fraudsters have turned their attentions away from the protected high street shops to the vulnerable retailers – such as those at shows and exhibitions with no way of authorising credit and debit cards.
To combat this, exhibitors are turning to Ocius. The system, which utilises a VeriFone mobile terminal, solves this by offering permanent connectivity via GPRS and allowing authorisation of card transactions in a matter of seconds from anywhere in the country.
Transactions are completed in three simple stages. Firstly, the retailer keys in the transaction value and then inserts the card to take payment. The transaction is then sent to Commidea for authorisation, via one of the UK’s leading mobile communications networks, and finally two receipts are produced – one for the retailer and one for the cardholder.
The use of GPRS means there are no call charges ensuring an extremely cost-effective system. The system is also very quick, with authorisation taking as little as four seconds. A one-off set up fee covers the creation of the customer’s account, after which there is a low cost fixed monthly fee, covering rental, telecoms and processing fees.
At the end of each day all transactions are automatically processed and transferred to the retailers’ bankers. The payment settlement is then made directly with the retailer. Ocius is supported by major UK banks, providing detailed, centralised reporting and management information for organisations using multiple terminals.
The system has been developed to EMV I & II specifications and has achieved generic Chip & PIN approval from major UK banks, meaning that no additional bank testing is required to enable the acceptance of Chip & PIN payments.
As well as shows and exhibitions, the Ocius GPRS mobile card payment system opens a number of opportunities for retailers – for home delivery, queue busting, mobile retailing - offering a realistic method of mobile credit and debit card authorisation.
“The ease of use and time saving from using the Ocius mobile payment system has been tremendous,” commented Owen Jones, Sales Manager for the Snowdonia Cheese Company Limited. “It really has proved to be a huge benefit. The system and service are is quite simply unbeatable.”
In addition to this mobile GPRS solution Commidea’s Ocius software is also available on Wi-Fi terminals (with full pay at table functionality) for hospitality merchants, and on countertop terminals for normal high street retail environments.