Retailers and their banks across South Africa are moving away from cash and into the mobile, agile world of Android payment systems. As they do, payment terminals become increasingly mission critical.
One faulty kiosk at an all-night drive-through could mean hours of revenue lost. A broken payment terminal in a busy supermarket can cause customers to become frustrated, and even leave the store.
Trade Link’s service team works around the clock behind the scenes to keep retail payment systems running smoothly, so businesses can trade anywhere, anytime.
Shanonlea Howard, who heads Trade Link’s complementary business, says Trade Link draws on a repeatable, streamlined process, agility, national footprint and a deep understanding of each customer’s needs to help retailers harness modern payment systems and ensure they can accept payments 24/7.
Due to the nature of the terminals, Trade Link focuses heavily on security, storing and managing them according to payment card industry (PCI) standards. Trade Link’s focus on security has resulted in a unique capability to support and deploy one of the largest banks in South Africas’ switching environments to retail.
Focused on continuity
“We are driven by success, and to us success means ensuring our customers are up and running with minimal to no issues. We manage 50 000 payment terminals for our customers across South Africa, with a 24-hour helpdesk and a team of around 300 standing by to offer remote or on-site support,” says Howard.
Because team Trade Link knows how critically important payment terminals are for its customers, it offers a four-hour service level agreement for priority-1 terminals – like self-service payment kiosks at all-night fast food outlets.
Trade Link’s support teams include a help desk team working around the clock to offer first line basic troubleshooting, a second line support team offering remote support and more in-depth technical troubleshooting and field service teams backed by warehouse teams to ensure merchants are back up and trading as quickly as possible.
Future-forward advisory services and support
Trade Link CEO Ahmed Laher says that Trade Link’s support extends to advisory services to ensure that payment terminals meet the exact needs of every customer.
“We track trends in the market and we’re seeing an increased shift to cost-effective, standalone Android-based terminals with both a Sim and a Wi-Fi connection. Merchants want to be supported whether they have a network connection or not, and these terminals allow them to trade offline and continue as normal once they are connected again.
“Many are also pivoting to Android-based terminals because they can bank on the terminal as well as use other application layers that do not interfere with the core banking components.”
Because Trade Link has 30 years’ experience of working in the retail sector, the company knows what devices to recommend to its clients. It also knows how rugged terminals must be to withstand daily use in a retail environment.
“We produce custom-built, environment-specific cradles to enhance PCI at retail and ensure terminal uptime,” Laher says.
“We are usually informed ahead of time that the banks are planning to bring out a new terminal, which gives us time to produce a specifically-designed cradle. We then offer the terminal and cradle as a package deal. For drive-throughs, for example, we have a cradle that is designed to be handed to the customer.”
He adds: “We support the entire lifecycle from sign up, to coordination, deployment, installation and support, as well as working with banks, switching partners and terminals to facilitate the payment in a retail environment.
“We do work for multiple financial institutions – each with different terminals, capabilities and needs in their spectrum. We can cater for that, end-to-end, within the defined timelines.”
This means Trade Link’s customers are free to focus on their business priorities, and leave the tech in the hands of the experts.