Product: ICT 220 and ICT 250
Company: Ingenico
The citizens in the small country town of Valence, France, get to use Ingenico's newest payment terminals before anyone else on the planet. They earned this distinction because Ingenico's Sagem-Monétel factory is in Valence, where its terminals are designed and key components are manufactured.
Therefore, when new terminals are developed, the restaurants and shops around Valence serve as the terminals' initial testing ground.
According to Bob Rittle, Director of Product Marketing, Ingenico North America, over 60 units of Ingenico's new ICT 220 countertop terminal have been tested in Valence for the past several months. In early 2009, Ingenico expects to make the 220 available to the retail world, with the ICT 250 to follow in summer 2009.
The 220 and 250 are part of the ICT (Ingenico Countertop) 2xx terminal series. That series has been Payment Card Industry (PCI) PIN Entry Device (PED) 2.0-approved - a certification that doesn't go into effect until July 1, 2010. "I know we're the first 2.0 countertop because no one else has a 2.0 PCI PED certification," Rittle said. Ingenico's ICT series received certification in December 2008.
The terminals are not designed for big box retail installations, but for the countertop terminal market - smaller businesses that do not have integrated POS systems, such as restaurants and beauty salons.
Both terminals come equipped with color displays and dual chip, Telium-based architecture. One chip is dedicated to data security and the other chip to the application that runs the device.
"The demands of 2.0 security and the go-forward demands of security being imposed by the industry requires more and more processing power to be compliant," Rittle said. "The more processing power I have, the more function I can put in software and less in hardware. If I have less in hardware, I have less break points."
Unlike the 220, the 250 is a contactless device, where customers do not have to swipe payment cards at the POS. The value of contactless terminals for specific payment environments is beginning to materialize in the marketplace. Mass transit and sports venues are two markets where contactless payments have shown promise.
"If you get in a higher volume per day requirement, people are going to look at every factor that could slow the transaction down or conversely speed the transaction up," Rittle said.
In November 2008, Ingenico introduced the ICT 2xx series at the Cartes & IDentification tradeshow in Paris. For the event, Rittle stayed at a hotel near the famous Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame and routinely dined at a quick service restaurant (QSR) in the vicinity. Rittle noted that the 12 terminals at the cash registers in the restaurant were Ingenico; the terminals were also all contactless.
Rittle concluded the restaurant operators had recognized the value of contactless to speed up transactions at the POS. "What [QSR] can you think of other than the one next to the Eiffel Tower that would do more business than the one next to the cathedral of Notre Dame?" he said.
To learn more about the terminals, contact Ingenico Sales Executive Chris Meitzler at the phone number below.
Ingenico
678-456-1330
www.ingenico.com
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