Contactless Payments

Soft POS – Revolutionising Merchant Payments

fsssiteadmin — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 08:10:37 +0000

Soft POS – Revolutionising Merchant Payments fsssiteadmin Mon, 01/31/2022 - 13:40

Contactless payments are on an upward trajectory owing to the emergence of innovative payment systems, progressive regulatory mandates related to increase in transaction thresholds and transaction fee waiver for merchants and growing consumer preference for greater convenience. The pandemic has further accelerated the trend, with consumers and merchants, both more eager than ever, to adopt touch-free payment methods. India’s, unique, secure, and interoperable real-time Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for retail payments transactions, for instance, shows a clear trend of increasing adoption. The total number of UPI transactions crossed the 3 billion monthly milestone in 2021. Likewise, in several markets – Sri Lanka, Egypt, and Indonesia – lightweight acceptance infrastructure -QR codes- has catalysed growth of contact-free in-store payments.

Acquirers that orient themselves to innovate around these needs and journeys are best positioned to win. Software Point of Sale (Soft POS) represents an incredible opportunity to connect consumer demand for contact free payments with a growing number of merchants seeking an affordable, digital-first approach to service customers.

Soft POS transforms current generation smart phones or tablets into contactless acceptance devices -- simplifying and speeding up the merchant setup process and obviating costs associated with traditional point of sale devices. According to a 2021 study by Juniper Research, the global number of smart phones being used for Soft POS payments will increase from 3.2 million in 2021 to almost 24 million in 2026.

For acquirers, Soft POS enables rapid and cost-efficient expansion of their merchant portfolio through a differentiated services offering. In emerging markets where payment acceptance infrastructure is spotty and underdeveloped, a significant base of the micro and small merchant segment remains underserved due to the fragmented nature of the market and the costs related to acquisition and servicing. Soft POS allows acquirers to bypass costs inherent in the traditional POS acquiring model and empower millions of micro and small merchants to accept digital payments. In India, for instance, there are 5 million POS devices and 200 million smart phone users. Likewise, Africa and Asia Pacific are mobile-first markets. Acquirers can tap into this delta to lower cost and access barriers and achieve economies of scale and.

With the build-out of basic payment acceptance infrastructure, Soft POS also unlocks sizeable opportunities to capture new sources of revenue from "white space" offerings. For instance, the ability to provide access to funds for “new to credit” merchant segments against card swipes on their POS terminals, which will further incentivise merchants to execute more transactions.

For large retailers, Soft POS can improve customer service experience by expediting the checkout process, as customers can simply tap their mobile devices to pay. Retailers can also experiment with a range of in-store formats -- personalised in-aisle services, curb side pick-up, queue busting – significantly elevating the in-store shopper experience.

Additionally in many emerging markets, the consumer journey begins with retailer websites and m-commerce apps but ends with payments in cash on delivery of goods and services. Tap to Phone enables merchants to digitalise these transactions and eliminate cash-handling overheads.

To better monetize their role within the value chain and deepen merchant relationships, acquirers can offer proximate services where they have a play. For each added value service, the merchant receives an additional fee per transaction, thus incentivising digital payments acceptance. Some of the VAS that can be offered includes – consumer financing at the point of sale, analytics, and utility payments.

Selecting the Soft POS Provider

Acquirers are increasingly partnering with technology service providers (TSPs), rather than building capabilities in-house, to improve agility and time to value. Acquirers need to collaborate with TSPs that offer:

Integrated solution comprising front-end application and payment processing and switching
Support multiple payment rails – cards, accounts, direct, debit – to optimise acceptance costs
Offer parametrised solution to rapidly launch and adapt new merchant propositions in response to market needs
API-driven architecture for orchestration of expansive partner ecosystems to deliver differentiated offerings
Automate merchant operations, including onboarding, risk monitoring, clearing and settlement, and dispute management
Accommodate high workloads and cost-efficiently process large volumes of transactions

FSS POS Solution

FSS offers a complete solution to merchants for POS acquiring and processing.

The Soft POS app resident on the merchant’s device enables merchants to collect payment by simply passing the customer’s contactless card over their phones, automatically processing the payment through FSS application. The Soft POS app is device agnostic and is certified for PIN on Glass entry as well as certified by Visa, MasterCard and Rupay card schemes.

The FSS system is designed for scale and can process large volumes of small value payments that will be unlocked with the growth in the acceptance network. The processing system is device agnostic, supports a range of payment acceptance modes (cards, QR, wallets), and offers direct connectivity to interchanges.

FSS lowers operating costs through automated operations. This includes payments integration, connectivity to the card and other payment rails, merchant lifecycle management including clearing and settlement dispute management, risk and fraud detection, terminal security certification and compliance. Acquirers can also monetise large sets of transactional data by sharing transactions trends and industry performance benchmarks.

The 'Uber'isation' of payments - reality or pipe dream?

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 05:20:53 +0000

The 'Uber'isation' of payments - reality or pipe dream? admin Mon, 10/12/2020 - 10:50

I recently participated in a fascinating debate as part of a panel discussing the impact of the Covid pandemic on the card payments business. I was joined by fellow professionals or, as they admitted, ‘payments nerds’: Angus Burrell from emerchantpay; Matt Grifn from Nets Group; Michel Drupsteen from ING’s Payment Centre and Paul van Alfen, from aviation payments consulting firm – Up in the Air.

Yes, we debated some of the more evident points surrounding card payments and Covid but with lockdown mentality now gripping nations across the world, we felt that the timing was right for us to start questioning where consumer’s new Covid-influenced demands are going to shape us – the payments business.

The answer was clear; Covid has changed consumer behaviour forever and the ‘uber’isation of payments’ is here to stay!

I urge you to listen to the recording but if you haven’t the time, I’d like to share a few of the more pertinent soundbites below. I’d also love to hear from you and understand if this is a shared experience? Our panel appeared to agree far more than disagree on all of the points raised but are we right with our thinking despite what the data, our gut-feeling or Angus’ Mother tells us!!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

The rise – and rise – of Contactless; Of course the merits of contactless are more and more to the fore but as Michel explained from the ING perspective, there will be an increasing trend to ‘decrease the use of cash without being cashless’ so no death bell for the coins in our pockets just yet.
The pandemic is clearly acting as an accelerator to digital payments despite the availability of new form-factors. ING is seeing rst-time users in online spending from the over 50 age-group as evidence of this boosted push to online/mobile.
Increasing change at the front end (“contact to contactless”…”tokenisation”..”card to mobile”) is putting increased pressure on the backend of payments. As I explained, merchants can’t take on the whole cost of new technology and coupled with the Schemes enabling partnerships, this has paved the way to ‘partnerships’ becoming the new ‘form factor’.
Talking of the schemes, we couldn’t resist predicting the nature of Mastercard’s and Visa’s existence in the years ahead. The panel concurred with my belief that we’ll see the schemes continue to strengthen their ‘network company’ role, connecting the issuers and acquirers albeit through new business models, maybe different platforms and certainly with new partners at their side.
With open banking and super apps, payments are becoming just pass-through mechanisms. A lot of sectors (such as the travel industry and hospitality) are having to innovate even further and in doing so, are challenging the current payment business model.
Consumer user experience (UX) is paramount. As supported by a recent ING survey, “there are only so many payment methods that consumers can handle”. As Matt from Nets explained, “payments will be an extension of the customer experience in a different sphere – a little like Uber”.

Author
Narendra Nandal, Head Issuance

About FSS
Financial Software and Systems (FSS) is a leader in payments technology and transaction processing. The company offers a diversified portfolio of software products, hosted payment services and software solutions built over 29+ years of experience. FSS, end-to-end payments suite, powers retail delivery channels including ATM, POS, Internet and Mobile as well as critical back-end Chennai, India. FSS services leading global banks, financial institutions, processors, central regulators and governments across North America, UK/Europe, ME/Africa and APAC and has 2,500 experts on-board.
For more information, write to products@fsstech.com

Invisible Payments are here

admin — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 05:30:02 +0000

Invisible Payments are here admin Thu, 12/26/2019 - 11:00

Picture this, you are on your way to work and you pull into one of your regular fast food restaurants drive-thru service. But, instead of whipping out your phone or card to tap/swipe to pay after you place your order, the payment is done simultaneously by detecting and authenticating your voice as you order. You simply grab your burger and beverage and leave. That’s a glimpse into the future of retail. Amazing! Isn’t it?

This might be one of the innumerable theoretical assumptions where payments industry is headed. But, with Canada modernizing its payments infrastructure with a vision to make the ecosystem secure, flexible and future-ready – it has the potential to dramatically revolutionize payments. From day-to-day banking, payroll, retail transactions, merchant payments, fund transfers, taxes, to utility bills the possibilities to introduce one-touch, convenient and invisible transaction processes are endless.

Canadians are already increasingly shifting towards cashless transactions, with more than 25% in favor of open banking system. It is true that mobile wallets and other fintech payment services such as GooglePay, ApplePay, AndriodPay, etc. are making our lives easier, but the friction still exists at the backend. But that is about to change. With Canadian financial institutions exploiting newer payment rails, sophisticated data structures shared across the ecosystem and overlay payment services, we are looking at near real-time availability and clearing of funds.

Open banking system is gaining massive momentum across the globe. In fact, EU’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) marks a watershed moment in integrated/digital payments and policies regulating that, in Europe. The directive is set to provide a seamless connectivity between bank systems and third-party payment services providers for account information, payment initiation and transfer of funds using open application program interfaces (APIs). This is going to have game-changing impact on instant payments.

Many countries in EU have already taken initiatives to implement open banking systems, some of the major examples are Slovenia and France (STET), Poland (via PolishAPI) and the Berlin Group, the frontrunner in implementing modern, interoperable and seamless set of APIs. Open banking and APIs has become a global trend with several other nations actively working towards launching unified payments systems to enable faster, contactless and invisible payments. India, for example, has launched a Unified Payments Interface (UPI). It helps integrate multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application facilitating seamless fund routing as well as merchant payments through a single interface.

Needless to say, we are heading towards an exciting time within the payments industry. Open banking systems will not only seamlessly interconnect the finances of companies but will be the gateway to invisible banking. And when data exchange triggered by open banking is combined with machine learning (ML) and artificial learning (AI), the opportunities it is going to hold is simply endless.

Author Jayesh Sawant
Payments Practise and Innovation Head
Canada