Istanbul,
20 April 2005 – Banksoft, a leading provider of card-based payment solutions,
announced today that Finansbank and HSBC started sharing POS terminals through
“Single POS” capability provided by Banksoft. Single POS is a system devised to
enable acquiring banks share a single terminal at the merchant site.
In
Turkey, banks used to create, maintain and manage their dedicated POS networks
and terminals. While it allowed the banks to create their own POS menus and
rapidly add new features, this scheme resulted in an overinvestment in POS
infrastructure. It is common to see merchants with 4-5 POS terminals while the
current record is 14.
“Single
POS” is a solution that unites best of both worlds allowing separate POS
software for participating banks and minimizing investment by using single
terminal equipment. The start menu of the terminal displays the names of the
participating institutions and when the merchant selects the bank, the terminal
starts to behave as if it was the terminal of the selected bank.
HSBC
and Finansbank started the use of the “Single POS” system in selected merchants
they already share. Based on the positive feedback from the merchants about the
convenience of use, they plan to spread the systems to a greater number of
merchants. The current plan is to reach 1,000 terminals before September 2005.
“Our
solution is an important cost saving for acquirer banks. Not only the initial
investment made for a POS terminal, but also and more importantly the ongoing
field service, maintenance and repair constitute the biggest cost in acquiring
business,” said Taner Aktuna, POS products manager at Banksoft.
About
Banksoft
Istanbul-based Banksoft, is a
leading provider of retail banking solutions. Its solutions includes credit
& debit card management, ATM driving and monitoring, ISO-8583 switching,
POS network management, EBPP and EMV-compliant smart cards. Today, over 11
million credit cards and 20million debit cards are managed by Banksoft. The
solutions fully support EMV standards and are used by the first European bank
to obtain both Visa and MasterCard certifications (www.emvco.com).