Empowering omnichannel merchants

Global POS manufacturer Ingenico Group has reported significant growth in its distribution and omnichannel service channels in recent years. To date, the France-based company founded in 1980 has deployed over 27 million POS terminals in 170 countries. And strategic acquisitions have solidified its position as an omnichannel service provider. "Ingenico acquired Ogone and GlobalCollect, two prominent e-payments companies, as well as other acquisitions along the way, which has allowed us to establish a clear, present, growing omnichannel strategy where we have in-store, mobile, unattended, and with these acquisitions, online payments," said Rod Hometh, Senior Vice President of Strategic Development at Ingenico Group North America.

In early 2016, Ingenico ePayments officially launched as the company's online and mobile commerce division. Ingenico noted that the division’s services include over 150 payment methods, mobile-optimized checkout made possible via Ingenico Connect's integration toolkit, data analytics supplied by Ingenico's Elevate business intelligence tool, fraud management services and cross-border commerce expertise, among others.

Assembling these strategic building blocks for the future has resulted in dynamic changes to the company’s revenue structure. According to Hometh, hardware represents about 70 percent of Ingenico's revenues today. Non-hardware services such as e-payments, processing, support, fraud protection and build out of distribution centers regionally comprise the remaining 30 percent.

POS hardware sales growth for Ingenico has been fueled, in part, by the U.S. migration to EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip-enabled terminals. "We came to the migration having done it in 80 countries, so we were well prepared and able to secure business readily," Hometh said, noting that accelerated EMV adoption by smaller merchants will likely occur later this year and into 2018, a pattern evidenced in other global regions.

Embracing innovation

Operating behind the scenes, Ingenico Labs serves as the company's center for innovation. "It is a group of people and research area that does nothing but think about where payments are going to be in 2020, 2025 and beyond," Hometh said. He added that the company is working with other global innovators, mapping out the future.

One such innovation demonstrated during the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival was Ingenico's Connected Screen. Payment technology built into the digital billboard screen allows contactless payments via chip card or mobile wallet. Festivalgoers used the technology to purchase film tickets and other venue items.

Historically, Ingenico typically hasn’t sold directly to ISOs, but it has established an extensive distribution partner and acquiring channel network that ISOs can align with in the U.S. market and other regions for anyone interested in expanding internationally, Hometh said.

The company also emphasizes ease of configuration and meeting the individual needs of each retail segment. Ingenico introduced the Bluetooth-enabled Moby/3000 mobile POS smart card reader to help smaller merchants transition to EMV cost-effectively. The iSMP4 Companion enterprise-class mobile POS device, on the other hand, accommodates top-tier merchants with higher memory capacity and barcode scanner; it can also be semi-integrated.

ISOs and independent software vendors (ISVs) directly benefit from semi-integrated solution capabilities. "The technology allows an ISV to use one of our devices to gain EMV or secure encrypted transactions without having to completely modify the systems that they've already built," Hometh said. "The terminal talks to their POS system and their POS system stays out of PCI scope. They don't have to do a lot of coding and recertification of their solution."

Equally important is being able to integrate products and services that offer fluid movement across merchant channels. "We want to provide them a platform where somebody can start a sale online and finish it in a store, or start a sale in a kiosk and finish it on their mobile phone as they're somewhere down the block, and all the permutations of that," Hometh stated.

As part of that initiative, the Ingenico Marketplace makes it possible for developers to integrate very specific applications that benefit merchants at the POS.

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