HARNESS THE PAYMENT PROCESSING VALUE ADD

Business Solutions — July 1, 2008

If you’re a POS (point of sale) VAR not selling some sort of payment processing solutions, you’re leaving money on the table. ISV (independent software vendor) AccuPOS created its retail and hospitality software to integrate with Cynergy Data, a provider of integrated payment systems. The benefits to AccuPOS and its customers have been far-reaching.

“As part of its services, Cynergy provides a Web-based virtual terminal, as opposed to a stand-alone desktop terminal,” explains Zion Shina, CEO of AccuPOS. “Since it’s virtual, all of the customer’s data is stored on Cynergy’s servers.” This means that AccuPOS’ customers don’t have to worry about backing up data, along with the PCI (payment card industry)-related issues that follow. Another benefit of a virtual terminal is that the merchant always is running on the latest version. Since it’s not a desktop version, there’s never a need to perform an upgrade.

In addition, Shina says that Cynergy also offers a tool that allows merchants to view transaction histories, as well as process card transactions, which occur outside of the traditional POS. That is, mail and Web orders can be processed using Cynergy’s virtual terminal.

A hot area amongst retailers currently is gift cards. Cynergy and AccuPOS offer customers the ability to use preprinted cards or create custom cards. “Offering gift cards isn’t as much of a revenue generator for us as it is a value-add for our customer,” says Shina. “When VARs focus on making money, it’s easier to make wrong decisions that may be profitable only in the short term. It’s better for a VAR to make decisions aimed at benefiting its customers [i.e. offering gift cards], as doing so will lead to happy customers and long-term success for the VAR.”

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