article-14263.xml
Pet-Store Chain Adds Private-Label Credit
Even the smallest retail chains can offer private-label credit-card services. Shake A Paw, a pet-store chain based in Mahwah, N.J., and operating four locations in New York and New Jersey, selected Shoppers Charge Accounts (SCA) to develop and administer its private-label credit-card program.
Through its credit-card program, Shake A Paw will offer cardholders special privileges, such as a 90-day, same-as-cash option—making how much that doggie in the window costs a much smaller obstacle to pet adoption.
Shake A Paw sells puppies and the products needed to raise them, including training aids, crates, toys, food and vitamins. SCA is a division of TD Banknorth, N.A., headquartered in Portland, Maine.
Gift Cards Gain Mobility
A recently announced wireless application from San Diego-based Transaction Wireless allows gift cards to be purchased and sent via mobile phones. Additionally, the technology facilitates management of gift-card accounts, enabling consumers to check balances, combine balances from multiple cards and add funds to the cards all via their mobile phones.
Conducting the gift-card transaction via mobile commerce (m-commerce) will create branding and personalization opportunities for both retailers and consumers. The m-commerce platform lends itself to easy enhancement of gift cards with personalized images, audio and video, which create custom-tailored consumer experiences.
For retailers, the m-commerce-based gift-card transaction could become a powerful branding tool that provides an opportunity to develop one-to-one marketing initiatives and build customer-intimacy programs. The versatile application incorporates text messaging, Internet and voice technologies, and operates on any wireless system or transaction processing platform.
Another advantage of the wireless gift card will be the seamless integration of stored-value systems to the mobile phone. When traditional plastic gift cards are lost or stolen, the cash value remaining on the card is also lost or stolen. However, because the wireless gift card’s cash value is stored and tracked through the cardholder’s unique mobile-phone number, the cash value is never lost.
To support the new services, Transaction Wireless entered into a processor licensing agreement with Secure Payment Systems (SPS), a national gift- and rewards-card processor also based in San Diego.
Restaurants Serve Secure Wireless SolutionA mid growing consumer concerns over identity and credit-card theft, and increased awareness of nefarious practices such as credit-card skimming in restaurants, technology that enables pay-at-the-table processes has met with rave reviews. In a pay-at-the-table scenario, restaurant servers provide patrons with wireless handhelds and the consumer actually processes the card transaction; the consumers’ payment cards never leave their possession.
Following a six-month proof-of-concept test of its new On The Spot wireless-payment solution, Las Vegas-based VeriFone Holdings concluded that pay-at-the-table products and services successfully allowed restaurant operators to accept lower-cost debit-card payments, improve operational efficiency and provide consumers protection from card fraud. The proof-of-concept phase was implemented in more than 30 installations representing a wide variety of restaurant environments and multiple geographic locations.
“Guests like the elimination of any potential fraud and they find the [technology] to be interactive and fun,” said John Metz, owner of the Aqua Blue restaurant in Roswell, Ga., one of the test locations for the new technology. “We like it because it helps move tables on a busy night,” he added.
In a consumer survey of restaurant patrons who experienced the On The Spot solution, VeriFone found that 87% of respondents said they had a “high” sense of security using the system; 85% reported the system was faster than conventional payment methods at restaurants; and 52% said that being able to use their PIN-based debit card was important to them.
VeriFone provides three methods of deployment: stand-alone use, hosted managed services and integration with restaurant management systems (RMS).