The largest specialist retailer of greetings cards in the UK, Clinton Cards, improves payment processing speed with VeriFone’s PAYware solutions.
Customer profile: Clinton Cards
Business focus: Retail
Location: United Kingdom
VeriFone solution: PAYware Merchant, PAYware Link and Vx 810
The Problem
Clinton Cards needed a robust new in-house payment processing solution to help with increased trading.
Founded in 1968, Clinton Cards is now the largest specialist retailer of greetings cards, plush merchandise (soft toys) and related products in the UK with nearly 900 shops and 3,000 points of sale. With extremely high sales volumes in peak periods such as Christmas, Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, Clinton Cards decided they needed a robust in-house payment processing solution that would allow them to seamlessly integrate their entire POS system and manage the growing transaction volumes. Ultimately an end goal was also Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance. “The protection of cardholder data is of the utmost importance and we wanted to take the steps toward PCI compliance so customers could shop at Clinton Cards with confidence,” says Barry Hartog, Group Commercial Director at Clinton Cards.
The Solution
With PAYware software, Clinton Cards could retain control over payment processing and complete upgrades as needed in-house.
Clinton Cards made the decision to buy and install PAYware software in-house, to retain control over the payment processing infrastructure and communications. VeriFone developed a solution using PAYware Link and PAYware Merchant that utilised Clinton Card’s existing VeriFone PIN pads. And in the future if Clinton Cards wanted to upgrade any part of the payment infrastructure or accept new card types, they could do so without making time-consuming changes to their POS system.
To accept a card payment, the Clinton Cards POS system simply sends a payment request to PAYware Link. PAYware Link handles all aspects of the EMV chip and PIN transaction by driving the PIN pad and routing the transaction to PAYware Merchant for online authorisation. PAYware Link even provides messaging back to the POS for displaying prompts or printing receipts. By moving the complexity of the transaction away from the POS, Clinton Cards found it easy to integrate its POS system with PAYware software.
PAYware Merchant provides safe and secure high-volume card authorisation and settlement. Data security is extremely important to Clinton Cards. By meeting the latest best practices and requirements for PCI DSS, PAYware Merchant helps to ensure that Clinton Card’s customers can be confident that their card data remains secure. PAYware Merchant also provides a comprehensive set of reports and management information to help reconciliation across the entire store estate.
The Result
Clinton Cards is extremely pleased with the reliability and resilience of their end-to-end VeriFone solution.
With payment processing now in-house Clinton Cards has a complete end-to-end solution from the same technology vendor and has experienced significant improvements in performance and speed. In such a demanding, high-volume environment, Clinton Cards needed a solution they could depend on, and with VeriFone they are now benefiting from shorter queues and reduced risk of fraud. Helping Clinton Cards make the decision to move to a PAYware solution is the strong reference account list in the UK, which includes several high-volume retailers.
In fact, Clinton Cards were so pleased with their payment solution they upgraded their PIN pads to VeriFone’s Vx 810. The Vx 810 is PCI PED approved and compliant with Common Criteria, the UK-specific PIN pad security requirement. The Vx 810 also has an optional contactless module, so Clinton Cards can easily add contactless payment whenever it’s right for them. This future-proofing is especially relevant for Clinton Cards because the majority of their transactions are for £10 or less, making them perfect candidates for contactless technology.
VeriFone tel: +44 (0)1895 275275 www.verifone.com
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