Rethinking SoftPOS for Scalable Success
In an era of rapid transformation, yesterday’s innovations quickly become today’s standards. Nowhere is this more evident than in the payments space, where technology evolves at lightning speed.
But the real challenge isn’t innovation. It’s about bringing that innovation to life. And this requires something that is often overlooked - integration. Where software, payments and compliance seamlessly merge to create the impact that awes us today and becomes a norm tomorrow.
SoftPOS is a perfect example of how innovation quickly becomes the norm.
SoftPOS transforms not only a smartphone or tablet but also other commercial off the shelf (COTS) devices into fully functional payment terminals where a person can tap their card on these devices to make a payment. Acquirers saw the potential and jumped on board, and so SoftPOS evolved from a breakthrough concept into an industry standard.
To support this shift, software providers built an entire ecosystem around SoftPOS, equipping acquirers with transaction reports, merchant dashboards, and seamless integration tools.
“In June 2020, we worked hand in hand with a banking giant to launch Tap on Phone functionality, making ours the first SoftPOS solution in Africa. At that moment, we saw the future unfolding before us,” says Jonathan Jacobs, Head of Product and Operations at Halo Dot.
With this technology, acquirers had the best of both worlds - the familiarity of traditional POS machines and the agility of SoftPOS.
SoftPOS: The next generation
SoftPOS began to evolve, unleashing new possibilities.
“We committed to taking payment acceptance to places where it previously struggled to venture. If it did, it involved a solution with significant limitations.” explains Gareth Corbishley Managing Director at Halo Dot.
Halo Dot is a payment software solution provider that’s been pioneering payment solutions across the globe.
The company took this vision across industries. Its strong track record of rigorous payment standards, such as being the first in Africa to be PCI MPoC certified, made the innovation not only possible but safe and secure.
With Halo Dot, SoftPOS enables queue busting by turning enterprise devices already used for barcode scanning, RFID and other uses into payment terminals, speeding up checkout in shopping aisles. At large international events SoftPOS allows attendees to pay with any card or digital wallet on the same device used for ticketing approval. And these are just some of many use cases that are now available, with Halo Dot promising more on the way.
The Challenge
Despite the progress in the SoftPOS industry over recent years, one challenge remained: the two worlds of SoftPOS and traditional payment devices never truly merged.
“SoftPOS technology has always been running in parallel to the acquirers’ other terminals and their processes. The solution has run in the SoftPOS providers’ environment rather than the acquiring platforms.”
This was the way the technology had functioned since its inception and had continued to do so even with SoftPOS progressing.
Acquirers have complete visibility and control over their hardware terminals but with SoftPOS, acquirers are completely dependent on the software provider for quality, reliability and troubleshooting. They lack visibility. They cannot directly access key system and service logs.
When it comes to hardware, acquirers can quickly diagnose and resolve merchant issues as they arise.
But with SoftPOS, there is complexity. Acquirers must contact their SoftPOS provider to understand the problem or gain visibility. Customer service slows down because every query must be passed from the acquirer to the payment provider and back down the chain.
The inconsistent processes between SoftPOS and traditional terminals makes operationalisation and scaling challenging. This holds businesses back from expanding and wastes their employee’s time managing twice as many processes.
Ironically, in a realm of rapid innovation and new use cases, acquirers don’t have full control over their terminal estate. This acts like a blind spot.
Merging Two Worlds
“We asked how we could merge the worlds and solve the operational complexity, while making payments and compliance simple” says Jacobs, “The answer was to create a solution where the acquirer could host the technology in their environment. That’s when we developed the Adaptor.”
The Halo Dot Adaptor addresses the problem of operational duplication. It provides a self-hosted alternative to the managed cloud-based Halo Dot Server, allowing customers to deploy the solution within their own environment. It removes replicated capabilities across systems.
“The Adaptor is packaged as a software component, known as a container, that we give to acquirers. This component is easy to connect into their environment.”
This deployment model allows for full control, flexibility, and adherance to compliance by leveraging the customer’s infrastructure, whether on-premises, in a private cloud, or on a preferred cloud provider - ultimately giving them back control.
“Previously, an acquirer would have their backend environment, and we would have ours to host their SoftPOS. They had invested in customised fraud detection software, but they couldn’t apply this to their SoftPOS solution. Every effort was either duplicated or wasted.”
The Halo Dot Adaptor solves for countries that require data sovereignty, with acquirers now being able to use SoftPOS and store the data in their own environment. The solution also allows for acquirers to scale SoftPOS without concern for the infrastructural considerations and with complete terminal estate visibility. Businesses are no longer held back.
“The solution is not one size fits all. For many of our clients, having SoftPOS hosted on our platform is ideal. By managing their environment, we ensure their resilience and reliability whilst removing administrative burden. But for other clients, particularly our large clients, who need to scale and already have extensive and expensive processes, the control is a game changer and operational saver.”
Whole New World
True progress in the age of transformation goes beyond simply creating emerging technologies. It lies in adapting mindsets. In unifying technology with the understanding that the next innovation is always on its way. It requires eliminating silos that lead to missed opportunities and inefficiencies. And it means merging every generation of technologies into a cohesive, secure, and intelligent ecosystem so they can truly deliver their value. The companies that embrace this shift will be the ones that create a whole new world of possibility.
To find out more about the Halo Dot Adaptor, reach out to Halo Dot at sales@halodot.io or find out more at www.halodot.io
