As CARTES 2014 opens Kazem Aminaee, president and CEO of Spire Payments, tells CARTES Daily News why the cloud presents big opportunities and security remains paramount
Q Users on the move is the theme of CARTES SECURE CONNEXIONS this year - how does this relate to Spire Payments?
A The concept of users on the move is at the heart of the Spire Payments strategy to provide its customers with a portfolio of card payment devices that enable payment transactions over any type of network (WiFi, GPRS, 3G, IP, dial-up), to any end-point (smartphone, iPad, countertop PoS, wireless PoS, mPOS, unattended kiosk) in any segment (retail, banking, hospitality, transportation, healthcare, e-commerce, micromerchant). No less than three new mobile products will be launched by Spire Payments at CARTES 2014.
Q Are there any business areas that Spire is not in but where you would like to have a presence?
A Spire Payments is currently active in all areas of card acceptance including countertop, retail, mobile, unattended and mPOS. The drive of the business is to dramatically increase geographical coverage, while providing customers with a complete range of payment solutions.
Q Can you give us a few thoughts about the importance of security, one of the key issues in our industry?
A In the payments world, security is paramount and we have a family of terminals sharing the same strong security design principles (for both hardware and software) certified PCI-PTS 3.x, 4.x and UKCARDS CC. Extensive use of open source software at all levels (for example, Linux, OpenSSL), provides a secure by-transparency platform that is a fundamental building block for security in the payments industry. Spire Payments has implemented its own certification authority using a public key infrastructure (PKI) for system and application software authentication/signature in which domain separation exists not only between systems (firmware) and applications, but also between application developers and providers, for even stronger protection and accountability.
Q Things are changing fast - what is the next big trend
do you think?
A The next big trend will be the drive towards a device-agnostic future where many payment-related features and applications are moved to the cloud. At present mPOS is classified differently to retail, to countertop solutions, et cetera. However, Spire Payments sees the disruption caused by mPOS as a pre-cursor to a payment architecture which eliminates categorisation of devices. The ability to have a single approved cloud-based application running on any device and communicating with any end point will ultimately provide customers with speed to market, flexibility and optimum device management.
Q What new products are you revealing at CARTES?
A Spire Payments will have a significant presence at CARTES 2014, which is the perfect platform to launch five new products to expand our industry-leading SP family:
- SPc5: A countertop 'all-in-one’ POS device aimed at emerging markets
- SPg7: A GPRS mobile solution for emerging markets
- SPu90: A universal self service payment solution for unattended environments
- SPm2: A chip and PIN mPOS device aimed at the micro merchant
- SPm20: A chip and PIN mobile payment device aimed at all mPOS market sectors from the micro merchant to tier 1&2 retail.
Q If you have time, what CARTES events will you attempt to get to?
A Of particular interest to us is the roundtable during the conference session ‘POS & iBeacons: Always More Innovation for the Connected Commerce’, today at 11.30. Nigel Dean, our director, technical communications, will be part of this leading-edge discussion which epitomises the convergence of mobile payments and new technologies.
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