The Client
In airports across the globe HMSHost, one of the world’s leading airport shopping and dining innovators operates top-name branded food and beverage outlets such as Starbucks Coffee, Burger King. These sit alongside custom developed locations such as the Red Bar, The Food Court, Lir Café and the Sports Bar at Cork Airport.
Business Challenge
The airports 24 hour activities lead to the need for a fast processing, truly reliable payment system that could handle the many different credit cards from around the world and that were supported by technical help around the clock. They also wanted to offer customers the option of currency conversion at the point of sale to enable them to pay in their own currency.
HMSHost chose their two branches in Ireland, Shannon and Cork to pilot this new, world first, technology.
Business Solution
The Servebase PC-EFT product is a robust and reliable solution for processing large volumes of transactions from multiple sources, built using Microsoft technologies. The unique element of this was the added functionality of Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC). This development was utilised on Chip & PIN devices in both wired and wireless environments allowing their seated customers the flexibility of paying at the table.
Upon payment of a bill, the Servebase system identifies if the credit card being used is eligible for DCC. If so, the Servebase system initiates a DCC option that appears on the Chip & PIN device, prompting the assistant to offer the customer the convenience of paying in their own currency. Servebase sends the device details of the DCC transaction; the amount in Euro’s, the eligible currency exchange rate for Ireland, as well as the converted amount.
The Chip & PIN technology is used in the credit card handling operation as a means of reducing fraud. The development of the chip and PIN devices integrated with Servebase’s PCI compliant software ensures that the payments are made securely, with all the data stored in enterprise Microsoft SQL databases.
Results
The DCC functionality has proved to be an outstanding success. The pilot sites have tested the robustness of the technology and the reliability of the systems across the various vendors’ platforms.
The figures prove the success. At Shannon airport, of the 57% of customers who were offered the DCC functionality, 91% said yes, they would like to pay in their own currency.
Erik Wouterson of HMSHost Europe said that, “Servebase have proved that they do what they promise and have consistently delivered excellent implementation and support.”
Key Benefits
Improved Service
The DCC functionality allows the foreign traveller at the airport to make a purchase knowing exactly what they are being charged in their own currency. This means that HMSHost can offer customers a superior service to any they will experience at other airport outlets.
A New Income Stream
There is a mark-up on the foreign exchange rate. This is a process agreement between the merchant and the third party treasury management company. HMSHost shares some of this mark-up, thus providing them with an additional revenue stream.
Security
HMSHost have the added assurance of knowing that charge backs from their banks will be kept to a minimum. This is a result from the reduction in fraud since the security aspects of the PCI compliant solution, PC-EFT and Chip & PIN functionality were introduced.
Support
The client has access to Servebase’s 24hr 365 days a year technical support helpdesk. This means that they can call them anytime of the day or night should there be any problems for example, for authorisations, refunds or user errors.
Increased Control
All of the transactions flow through a central point, consolidating transactional data and enabling better management reporting than would be available with a traditional DCC provider. Reports can show DCC acceptance levels and lost revenue opportunities can be monitored from this in order to identify training requirements to help structure staff incentive schemes.
The next step
So far this technology has been installed and integrated at HMSHost’s Shannon and Cork airport operations. As everything has gone so well there are now plans for future implementations to other locations across Europe.
