Best Buy In Turkey Opts For Ingenico Shared POS Service
Best Buy Co. Inc.’s first store in Turkey will use a shared point-of-sale service, eliminating the multiple POS terminals commonly seen domestically on merchant countertops, according to Ingenico S.A., which is supplying the service.
Unlike in the U.S., each bankcard issuer in Turkey has its own POS terminal, often resulting in merchants having as many as six devices on their countertops. Ingenico says its shared POS system enables retailers to use one terminal to accept multiple issuers’ cards.
Best Buy, which opened its store in Izmir last year, is using Ingenico terminals and PIN pads and is contracting with the company to service the terminals, a move that counters the traditional Turkish practice of banks supplying the POS equipment and leasing it to merchants. Under the three-year contract with Ingenico, Best Buy Turkey will rent the equipment from Ingenico, which will develop the software to manage all of the bank applications and handle deployment issues.
Best Buy Turkey will deploy 25 to 30 terminals in its store and in each additional store it may open, Ingenico says.
VeriFone Drops ‘Holdings’ Name
VeriFone Holdings Inc. has changed its name. The point-of-sale terminal maker now is called VeriFone Systems Inc., the San Jose, Calif.-based company announced May 18.
The “Holdings” name dated to the 1990s, when the Hewlett-Packard Co. owned VeriFone, a company spokesperson says. The name change better reflects VeriFone’s business identity, CEO Douglas G. Bergeron said in a press release.
Founded in the early 1980s, VeriFone grew as its Zon and Tranz lines of simple, reliable terminals helped hundreds of thousands of merchants convert from slow and cumbersome paper-based transactions to electronics payments.
VeriFone was publicly held from 1990 to 1997, when computer giant Hewlett-Packard paid nearly $1.3 billion in stock for the company in hopes of exploiting its smart card expertise and payment technology. Internet mania was near its peak, and VeriFone was hot, with 1996 revenues of $472.5 million. VeriFone generated $844.7 million in revenue in fiscal 2009, which ended Oct. 31.
From the May 27, 2010, issue of ISO&Agent Weekly.
