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Alpine Payment Systems, a Vancouver, Wash.-based independent sales organization, has become a reseller of Squirrel Systems point-of-sale systems. The ISO recently sent five of its staff to Squirrel Systems' headquarters in Burnaby, British Columbia, for training. Robert Ensminger, Alpine president and CEO, says the Squirrel Systems reseller deal augments his ISO's restaurant sales involving pay-at-the-table terminals. Following a European trip where he experienced pay-at-the-table firsthand, Ensminger began selling Ingenico S.A. wireless terminals last year and found success with restaurateurs. The Squirrel Systems deal enables Alpine to integrate the Ingenico terminals into Squirrel POS systems, which many restaurants want because of their ability to accept payments, manage tables and transfer sales data to accounting systems. Ensminger says he approached Squirrel Systems about becoming a reseller because he wanted to expand the number of potential restaurants to which Alpine could sell its services. The ability to bring a terminal to a patron is among the main restaurant pitches Alpine uses, Ensminger says. A waiter could prompt the customer to pay with a PIN debit card. A restaurant with $300,000 in monthly sales may cut the $7,500 monthly cost of accepting cards almost in half if 50% to 60% of customers pay using PIN-debit, Ensminger says. That assumes the merchant is paying a 2.5% credit card discount rate, which includes interchanges, processor and acquirer fees.
