This year support of EMV standard becomes a mandatory component of payment systems of US-based businesses. Consequently, more and more merchants ask themselves how they are going to implement their terminal solutions in view of the need EMV support. The purpose of this article is to describe the components of a modern terminal solution in order to help those who are trying to define their strategy of payment terminal usage. The subject is especially relevant for large-size merchants and payment facilitators, who have to deal with a large number of terminal deployments.
A modern terminal solution has to incorporate three key modules, which will address three aspects:
- Fulfillment management – for ordering, injection, and operation of terminals
- Terminal application – for transaction processing
- Terminal support and management system (TMS) – for configuration and updates of terminal applications
Let us address each of these aspects in detail.
Payment Terminal Fulfillment
During fulfillment process the merchant orders a certain number of terminals of specific models with specific injection keys, while the respective fulfillment center (which works directly with the manufacturer) handles the order and supplies the terminals to specific locations (points of sale).
In many cases large payment facilitators and gateways have to work with more than one terminal fulfillment center. The reasons are as follows. First, a fulfillment center may be out of stock for a particular terminal model, so you have to order this model from some other supplier. Second, not every fulfillment center can inject every processor’s key (usually, fulfillment centers have agreements with limited numbers of processors). This is particularly difficult when processing crosses borders, because fulfillment centers tend to specialize within a specific country of operation. Consequently, companies, dealing with merchants in different countries, or doing international processing, may require special tools to manage the entire process and ensure that proper terminals with appropriate keys are ordered from appropriate suppliers.
Another important fulfillment-related issue is injection of third-party keys. It should be noted that lately implementation of end-to-end encryption solutions has become a common practice. In these solutions, PAN data is encrypted with a key. Most payment facilitators and payment gateways prefer to use their own encryption keys. However, not all providers of fulfillment services are equipped to handle the third-party key injection. In order to have the right to inject third-party keys, a company needs to be equipped with special procedures and have special certifications. Beside that, a special agreement is needed by a company to be authorized to inject encryption keys on behalf of a specific third party.
When you consider your terminal solution, all these issues need to be taken into account (even if not all of them are will be handled by your in-house system).
Terminal application
There are several terminal manufacturers and numerous terminal models. Similarly, there are many different terminal solutions. However, from a global perspective, all terminal solutions can be divided into two categories.
- Terminal applications which have local footprint
- Terminal applications with no local footprint
A terminal application “with a local footprint” requires installation of some special components on a workstation it is connected to. Usually, these components are DLL libraries, which represent one of the most common approaches nowadays.
A terminal application “with no local footprint” does not require installation of any native libraries or drivers on a workstation that is going to manage the terminal.
The second solution is, naturally, the preferable one, as it allows you to access the terminal and work with it in a unified manner from different web or desktop applications, under different operating systems, using different mobile devices (such as smart-phones and tablets\pads).
Terminal management system
Once the terminals are deployed, they need to be supported and maintained. In this regard several issues need to be addressed.
First, a terminal may break. Some plan of action must be developed for a case when something goes wrong with a terminal (i.e. how the malfunctioning terminal is going to be replaced).
Second, from time to time the terminal logic might need to be updated. Both embedded terminal content and DLL applications have to be updated from time to time.
Finally, the advertisement content of the terminal needs to be updated as well.
A terminal management system must be capable of supporting all the listed functions and updates.
Conclusion
We’ve presented a brief overview of a terminal solution at the high level. In our subsequent installments we are going to address specific terminal solution components and aspects in greater detail. We encourage you to study the topic carefully before making decisions about your preferred terminal solution strategies. In our future articles we will cover more related topics.
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