In an initial deal worth R12-million, South African clothing retailer Edgars, one of the chains in the JSE-listed Edcon Group, has teamed up with local secure e-payments company Prism Holdings to roll out one of the world’s first mass implementations of sophisticated programmable point-of-sale (POS) technology into Edgars stores across South Africa.
As a result, Edgars has positioned itself at the forefront of the industry in secure smart-card payment, debit-card acceptance and loyalty-card capability, the company announced on Monday.
Apart from supplying the VeriFone SC5000 PINpads, Prism has developed an integrated payment application for the terminals into the existing Edgars POS system. The PINpads support global smart card solutions based on EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) specifications as well as existing magnetic-stripe debit and credit cards.
The SC5000 raises the level of fraud protection for PIN-based debit card transactions as it adheres to the triple DES (3DES) encryption standards being adopted by the payment industry around the world. The terminal also features an integrated smart card reader with support for secure application module (SAM) slots to enable acceptance of a broad range of smart-card-based loyalty and electronic purse schemes.
According to Geordie Blane, Edcon customer relationship manager at Prism, EMV is a global standard for the design, security and functionality of smart-card terminals and applications.
“Visa and MasterCard have mandated that all POS terminals be EMV-compliant by early 2005. With the rollout of the VeriFone SC5000s, Edgars is comfortably on track to beat that deadline,” Blane said.
Whereas magnetic-stripe cards are open to the skimming of account data off the card itself, smart cards securely store that data on the silicon chip providing increased levels of transaction security to the payments industry.
The EMV standard paves the way for the eventual elimination of card-skimming-related fraud.
Edgar’s integration of the SC5000 electronic payment model at each POS terminal creates a standard platform on which Edcon is expanding its payment options to customers.
Prism’s transaction switching entity, Prism TranSwitch Services, provides the links to the banking sector and to other systems’ POS infrastructure. With Edcon as a client, PTSS now switches card payment and other value-added processing services transactions to more than 600 stores: Edgars, ABC Shoes, Red Square, CNA, Arthur Kaplan and the United Group of stores including Jet, Sales House, Cuthberts and Smileys.
Peter Sutcliffe, chief technology officer of Edcon, stated that the decision to purchase the VeriFone SC5000 model was based on the need to enhance the current POS infrastructure to accept EMV smart-card payments. As a result, Edcon has strategically positioned their systems to participate in the national EMV pilot scheduled for early 2004. — I-Net Bridge