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Processing giant Worldpay Inc. announced early Tuesday it forged a new agreement with Revel Systems to support Revel’s iPad-based smart terminals for restaurants and other merchant locations. The agreement comes days after Total System Services Inc. (TSYS) said it is launching a line of smart POS devices and follows other examples of processors either creating their own device businesses or linking up with existing terminal sellers.
According to the announcement from Cincinnati-based Worldpay and San Francisco-based Revel, the deal will allow Revel to offer clients a wider selection of payments software and a single point of contact for support. The arrangement will also consolidate reporting at one portal for multilocation merchants. The capabilities from Worldpay will be handled on the back-end by Revel’s application programming interface, the parties said.
The deal will also allow Revel to offer merchants funding support through Worldpay’s FastAccess Funding service, which allows clients to settle their batch and get same-day access to their money. “By working with innovative leaders like Revel, Worldpay is better able to deliver products like FastAccess Funding to the merchant and business owners who can truly benefit from them,” said Matt Taylor, executive vice president and head of global integrated payments at Worldpay, in a statement.
The Worldpay-Revel agreement is the latest example of how payments processors are either linking up with so-called smart-terminal providers or creating POS device businesses of their own. Last week, for example, TSYS took its Vital brand out of mothballs for a new cloud-based equipment line it is calling Vital POS.
As with other smart-device product lines, Vital POS will enable back-office features such as analytics and reporting, inventory management, tax accounting, time-clock and employee-management functions, pricing and discount controls, and other features beyond payment acceptance.
Similarly, in November, Elavon, a processing unit of U.S. Bancorp, took a minority stake in Poynt Co. and expanded an alliance with the smart-device maker that had already been in place.
Other payments providers like North American Bancard Holdings LLC and Shift4 Payments LLC have created or acquired their own smart-terminal product lines rather than allying with outside companies.
The alliances, newly-created divisions, and acquisitions allow processors to satisfy a growing demand among merchants for more sophisticated capabilities without installing gear that crowds the countertop, sources say. Most often, the smart devices are Internet-connected, run on Android or Linux operating systems, and can handle a wide range of functions including loyalty and integration with e-commerce activity. “Merchants are looking for fully integrated solutions,” Erick Kobres, chief technology officer at Revel, tells Digital Transactions News, “but what we always pay attention to is footprint.”
As crucial as footprint, though, is cloud access, Kobres adds, a feature in which 9-year-old Revel was a pioneer. “The wave Revel has ridden is demand for cloud-based functionality,” he says. “The ability to operate from the cloud has been a driver in our space.”
