Ray Van Eng (11/04/96)
The Redwood Shores, CA based company is releasing a product aimed at enabling consumers and merchants to use e-cash (e.g. smart cards, digital cash etc.) to replace the bulk of the transactions that are traditionally handled by using coins and notes. The OMNI 1250 smart card terminal is a portable battery powered device that can be used practically anywhere indoors at shops, restaurants, merchant's venues or outdoors in taxis, newsstands, public transits, street vendors etc. With the introduction of the OMNI 1250 terminals, Verifone hopes to tap into the cash transaction market that makes up about 80% of all sales transactions in the world. Of course, if you are living in Sweden, the situation is reversed. About 80% of that country's sales transactions are done electronically. Let's examine the device. The OMNI 1250, which resembles a full-size calculator, has a dual back-lit display and keypads at opposite ends that eliminates the problem of having to pass the device back and forth between a consumer and the vendor during a transaction. In a typically buy and sell situation, the consumer would place his/her card into the OMNI 1250 and the merchant would enter the sale price and the consumer would either approve or cancel the sale by pressing the appropriate button. If approved, cash will be transferred from the customer's card to the machine. At the end of the day, the merchant would insert its own merchant card to take in all the transaction details and make a "deposit" of the running total at the bank's ATM. Because smart cards can be used to store personal data other than monetary values, customer royalty programs such as frequent flyer programs can be also implemented and handled at the point-of-sale with the OMNI terminal. An optional RS232 port can be used to print out receipts and the merchant can also attach a modem for online settlement. Verifone claims that the OMNI unit works with all 34 different smart card schemes in use today, including Visa Cash, MasterCard Cash, Mondex etc., in addition to various loyalty programs. The OMNI 1250 is part of Verifone's family of products designed to make electronic commerce ubiquitous in everyday life. Other components aimed at the Internet commerce market include vWallet, an electronic wallet application for consumers to store their credit card information, transaction details and other personal data on their computer, vPOS, a merchant web server software for mediation between the consumer and the payment processor during an online transaction and vGATE for payment processors to handle the financial transaction and settlement of online sales. Lastly, for home banking and remote shopping activities, Verifone offers the Personal ATM (P-ATM) that would allow consumers to draw money from their bank accounts into their smart cards to be used for online purchases via TV set top boxes like the ones that Sony, Phillips, Samsung and others are developing for WebTV. |
