It’s hard to believe it’s 25 years since I took that leap of faith to start STS. It’s been such an exciting journey of discovery and achievement. It hasn’t all been easy, but I am so glad I did it.
At that time the UK was the first country to start using Chip and PIN, and I believed it could be done more efficiently in hardware-independent software. Emvelink was born and in partnership with IBM, we quickly converted nearly half the top high street retailers. Visa were so impressed they gave us an award – Chip Vendor of the Year.
Since those heady days, STS has built an amazing reputation of pioneering software products, solving complex payments problems and all the while giving retailers choice and independence. Alongside this, STS has grown a renowned reputation for honesty, integrity and providing a personal approach to business.
The face-to-face payments landscape has evolved incredibly over the decades, yet all STS’ flexible products are still going strong. Our finest moment was going live with our own state-of-the-art cloud payment service last year. I am a firm believer that innovation is not about inventing new things but about putting existing things together in a new way. This is exactly what we did.
We put our own unique payment products together onto Amazon Web Services in combination with PAX Technology’s latest Android payment terminals, MYHSM’s decryption service and Worldpay’s advanced payment gateway to make something truly exceptional. We are actually processing the face-to-face transaction in the cloud not on the terminal. I'm not aware of anyone else who is doing this. This means changes made in the cloud are available immediately everywhere. We can monitor everything from one place and instantly alert any problems.
I am so proud of all we have achieved in 25 years. I am so proud of all those STS-ers who I have been privileged to work with over the years and who have contributed so much to have made this all possible.
“Mr Chip and PIN”