We are entering into the home stretch of 2015, and while the year isn’t over yet, this has been a very exciting year for Apriva. Through key partnerships, we have made significant strides in the payments industry. We have formed several powerful strategic alliances, integrated with influential worldwide hardware providers, partnered to bring comprehensive payment offerings to unattended markets and delivered EMV payment solutions to a broad range of U.S. customers. This year, as the industry undergoes major changes, Apriva is at the forefront of the payment revolution.
Let me give you a brief look at our recent partnerships so you can see how Apriva is enabling both merchants and their customers across a wide array of services and industries, and giving them the freedom to choose the payment methods and partners that work best for them:
The EMV liability shift has preoccupied most of payments industry this year. Merchants anticipating the October 2015 deadline are eager to update their systems for payment acceptance, but are mindful of doing so in the way that makes the most sense for their individual business. In order to serve our resellers looking to “future-proof” their merchant terminal portfolios, the Apriva POS Universal Application is a revolutionary way to keep terminal portfolios current and compliant. This single, innovative, thin-client host application and management system supports multiple terminal families including Ingencio, Verifone and Equinox and can deliver small, easy push updates to all terminals in the field at once. With the Universal Application, our customers can “future-proof” their portfolios from rapidly changing industry requirements without ever disrupting their merchant’s business. Additionally, Apriva released an EMV certified mobile card reader, the Anywhere Commerce Walker One, which supports EMV chip and signature payments. We also announced a partnership with Muira and will be releasing the Muira-010 reader in February, 2016. This reader is a Bluetooth, EMV and NFC card reader which gives the merchant the ability to accept both chip and signature and chip and pin payments. Both the Walker One and the Muira-010 can be paired with AprivaPay Mobile, our brandable mobile application that turns any Apple or Android device into a mobile point of sale. All of these EMV solutions complement Apriva’s any-to-any payment gateway, which provides the most comprehensive network of payment processors and hardware partners available in North America.
The parking and unattended industries are also changing rapidly with recent technological advances. To take advantage of these developments, Amano McGann, the leading provider of parking automation in North America, partnered with Apriva for both attended and unattended parking systems across their network of more than 5,000 locations. This partnership allows Amano McGann to enhance their payment systems by providing their customers with the ability to accept EMV cards, and connecting to our comprehensive network of payment processors to facilitate the acceptance of any emerging payment form. Our partnership means that their customers will easily be able to pay for their parking with the most diverse choice of payment options available today.
Simplicity and security are critical for merchants in the unattended market. Changing regulations, such as the EMV liability shift, require these vendors to have hardware solutions that can be managed and upgraded easily. To reduce time and capital overhead costs, remote upgrades and management are ideal for these vendors. To meet the needs of this unique market, Apriva partnered with Globalcom Engineering, a leading provider of payment hardware solutions, to integrate the Apriva Gateway with their unattended hardware solutions. This partnership introduces EMV hardware into a wide variety of unattended markets in North America including parking solutions, car washes, banks, gaming, vending, and retail. One especially unique feature of the combined Apriva-Globalcom solution is that the payment application lives on the device itself, reducing the PCI scope and associated regulation compliance requirements.
Mobile payment acceptance is increasingly crucial in today’s market. Global Payments, a leading worldwide provider of payment technology services, partnered with Apriva to deliver EMV white labeled mobile payment solutions to Global Payments’ U.S. customers. This agreement enables Global Payments to provide customized mobile payment solutions by white-labeling Apriva’s mobile payments solution, AprivaPay Mobile. AprivaPay Mobile turns Apple or Android devices into mobile points of sale, enabling merchants to leverage their existing devices to meet customer demands for mobile purchases. Our streamlined mobile payment application was a great choice for Global Payments, as it offers EMV chip card and MSR support, cloud based inventory control, multi-user capability, enhanced reporting features via an online web companion portal, the latest device and operating system compatibility and compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations.
2015 has been a breakthrough year for the payments industry, and these partnerships are only the beginning of Apriva’s dynamic changes to usher in the next generation of payment technologies. We’d love to hear your predictions on the future of the payments, so be sure to visit us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Apriva and let us know your thoughts on where the industry is headed.
– Stacey Finley Tappin, SVP NA Sales and Marketing Communications
