Smartlink

STS was delighted to win our first European Retail Solutions Award this year in conjunction with IBM customer, The Co-Operative Group. This award, for Best Customer Facing Technology, highlighted the original goals for STS, providing a solution which goes beyond chip and PIN.

Congratulations also must go to Whitbread for winning one of the major awards of the night, Innovative Company of the Year. Whitbread were nominated in multiple categories, including for Best Payment Solution Award with STS, IBM, Fidelity and VeriFone. We take the opportunity to have a look at how Whitbread's unique requirements were solved by its business partners.

STS provides its retailers with access to industry leading devices to ensure their needs are met. We have recently completed integration to three new PIN pads, NEC's PW-PE33, VeriFone's Vx810 and a unique mobile EPOS device from Korean company ITWell. We review each device as well as looking further at mobile EPOS via ITWell.

And finally Ollie takes a look at the present status of contactless payments and whether the success of this new medium is merely a stepping stone to the world of NFC phone payments.

Kind Regards

CEO, Smart Technology Solutions Limited

1.	Retail Solutions Awards
2.	Whitbread Case Study
3.	Support for new PIN pads
4.	ITWell Mobile EPOS
5.	Ollie's world - Update on contactless payments

When STS delivered our award winning Emvelink and SmartNS solution to retailers, we offered not only the ability to perform Chip & PIN transactions but also the flexibility of adding new smart card applications or using these new PIN pads for other applications. This extensible framework has been evident through the additional use of applications such as loyalty and gift cards and the ease of access to new devices such as mobile EPOS using STS' Emvelink Mobile or contactless using Touchlink.

The Co-Operative Group's re-use of Ingenico's i3300 PIN pads for customer surveys is a fantastic example of this re-use using STS' SmartNS framework. This simple, yet innovative and creative solution, won this years European Retail Solutions Award for Best Customer Facing Technology.

The Whitbread Group were nominated for a raft of awards at the European Retail Solutions Awards and their wins included Most Innovative Company of the Year, Best International Solution and Project Implementation of the Year.

STS is pleased to announce support for three new PIN pads, the NEC PW-PE33, VeriFone's Vx810 and ITWell's XPDA-V. Using STS' flexible smart card framework, SmartNS, STS partners are able to gain access to these with no further device integration requirements.

STS announces that it has developed the software to provide Chip & PIN functionality for the new ITWell Mobile Point of Sale terminal, the XPDA-V.Through this work, the ITWell XPDA-V POS will be available for use as an EMV Level 2 enabled mobile point of sale.

If, like me, you attended the recent Retail Solutions event in London you would have seen stands promoting contactless payments. I've reviewed this technology in its own right in previous newsletters and highlighting the benefits: speed of payment, zero cash handling costs for the merchant, convenience for the consumer, blah, blah...