Hypercom
Ensuring safe transactions is the key to success for this leader in the electronic payment market. The methods and locations companies can use to accept payments are nearly limitless. When it comes to providing electronic payment and digital transaction products and services, Hypercom stays ahead of the competition by making sure its technology is the most secure.
“One of the areas where we are really ahead of the competition is with remote key injection,” said Will Rossiter, vice president of global marketing. “This year, we exceeded 250,000 remote key injections in the US alone.”
Historically, merchants that wanted to add or replace keys to their terminals had to bring them into a service facility. With remote key injection, Hypercom is able to change out retailers’ keys remotely, saving the retailers time and money.
The company also embeds a public key infrastructure security layer in its terminals to protect the terminal and its applications from hacking and malware attacks. Rossiter said the company also excels in end-to-end, or point-to-point, encryption.
“We are partnered with a number of companies and have our own end-to-end data encryption technology that we released to the market,” said Rossiter. “We released that to the US market with no per-transaction fees.”
The technology encrypts cardholder data, starting at the payment terminal and ending at a trusted point where the data is decrypted. “It gives our customers more security confidence, particularly in areas where magnetic stripe credit cards are still very prominent,” said Rossiter.
Developing new employees
The company is experiencing tremendous growth, according to Rossiter. One of its goals is to double the size of its development force in its Manila facility.
“We expect to have 100 application developers there by the end of the year,” he said. “That will roughly double the size of our development base globally. We definitely refer to ourselves as a solutions company, and we are shifting more from hardware toward software and applications.”
As the industry hardware becomes more commoditized, the types of services and benefits the company can offer to its customers become more important. Hypercom has addressed that issue by focusing on security software and applications.
Recently, there has been a big push to get out the word about the company’s services and products. “We communicate with reporters, and analysts, globally, do quite a bit of advertising, and attend and speak at various shows where we show our products to many companies,” said Rossiter.
On the move
The company recently unveiled its L5000 series of products, which are customer-facing, multipurpose, multi-lane payment terminals. “It’s one of the most innovative products to hit the market in the past few years,” said Rossiter. “These products provide real solutions in the retail environment whether at the pharmacy for health insurance card processing, in the aisle for price scanning, or at traditional checkout offering integrated contactless, multimedia and other sought-after features.”
The company is also developing a portable payment terminal that can be taken anywhere on the sales floor. Rossiter said the product will likely be used at high-end retailers, such as jewelry stores where sales associates can bring the terminal from the countertop to the customer.
“We provide the most versatile products in the market when it comes to retail purchasing,” said Rossiter. With all its offerings, he said Hypercom works to identify the problems it can solve for its customers.
Mobile technology is one area where customers are looking for new solutions. The mobile industry is still considered an emerging market, and wireless payment is the fastest growing segment in the point of sale industry.
Hypercom is one of only a handful of companies in the world that can address so many issues and areas in the retail space, according to Rossiter. The company has a wide range of customers, he said, from the largest retailer in Europe and some of the largest in the US to corner stores throughout the world.
“We cover the globe in terms of payment solutions,” said Rossiter. He said the company is expanding its reach internationally.
“Some geographic areas are growing fast in terms of population, but the payment terminal technology in place there is still catching up to the technology that is available,” said Rossiter. “From our standpoint, the volumes in these geographies are still relatively small compared to more established regions, but we expect there will be significant growth in the coming years.”