Thank you for taking the time to read the second edition of Smart Technology Solution Limited's quarterly newsletter, Smartlink.

The ancient Chinese had a saying "May you live in interesting times" and there is no doubt the payments industry is living in interesting times. The past month has seen the European finance ministers agree to make payments faster and easier across the 27-nation bloc which should see support for the roll-out of SEPA. In summer 2007 we see the start of a pilot for contactless payments in London and in October 2007 the start of Canada's first EMV pilot in the Kitchener-Waterloo region south of Toronto. These events provide the impetus for further development in the payments industry and you will see STS continue to play a role in being at the forefront of payments software. Read more...

    
1. Product release - EmvelinkMobile
2. Partner Focus - Capita
3. Product Spotlight - The Canon KT-1 Mobile Point of Sale
4. Customer Spotlight - Hotel Chocolat
5. Ollie's World - Tales from the platform - an informal look at contactless payments
 

YESpay International Limited has seen continued success with it's EMBOSS bureau service with recent customer acquisitions including Jollyes and Hotel Chocolat. YESpay's EMBOSS, providing a pre-accredited, PCI certified solution, has utilised STS' award-winning Emvelink since 2004. The partnership between YESpay and STS has enabled the success seen by STS, in the tier 1 retailer space, to be replicated in the middle tier space. This allows these retailers access to the full benefits of an integrated chip & PIN solution with the future benefits of access to new smart card technologies as they come to market. YESpay are able to roll-out their accredited chip and PIN solutions in as little as 2 to 4 weeks.

YESpay's latest customer, Hotel Chocolat, is a British-owned phenomenon committed to real, authentic chocolate. They have partnered with YESpay and K3 Elucid (Hotel Chocolat's EPOS provider) to roll-out integrated chip and PIN through its existing and new high street stores. Acquirer pre-accreditation, PCI compliance, service reliability, transaction reconciliation and speed of transaction processing were critical factors for Hotel Chocolat's decision to choose YESpay's EMBOSS bureau service.


Paul Bathurst, IT Manager, Hotel Chocolat commented "Having selected YESpay's EMBOSS bureau service to manage our chip and PIN and magnetic card transaction processing, we were able to roll-out to our existing stores within a matter of days of having submitted the store registration details to YESpay. With new stores opening a rate of 2 to 4 per month, YESpay was the only service to meet our opening day deadlines ensuring we could accept card payments from day one. EFT performance has improved and reconciliation is made easy via a web browser to review and download daily transactions from each store."

"Once again, our EMBOSS bureau service has assisted a multi-chain retailer like Hotel Chocolat to implement chip and PIN without formal acquirer accreditation which could have taken up to 12 weeks and incurred significant costs. It's great to see all future stores being equipped with EMBOSS services enabling them benefit not only from improved in-store operations but also cost savings through our monthly bureau fee model," says Rohit Patni, EVP Sales and Marketing, YESpay.