Traditional card acceptance for a merchant requires the purchase or rental of a separate POS device. This iss not only an additional cost for the merchant but also other burdens: the separate device must have a separate space to be carried and protected, care must be taken to charge it, to switch it off when not in use – and then when it is needed connect and wait for it to coordinate with the network. With the softPOS terminal, these problems disappear at once, and the service is much cheaper than traditional acceptance: the monthly fee for the card acceptance service is more than 80 percent lower than for the physical mobile terminal.
Erste Bank is one of the first to offer to small business customers in Hungary the softPOS terminal provided by Global Payments Europe, which provides card acceptance more than 80 percent cheaper than the traditional solution: there is no subscription, registration, or device rental fee.
After concluding a single contract, Erste Bank’s small business customers can become card acceptors with the now introduced service of the financial institution, even within 2-3 days, without purchasing a separate device. The softPOS terminal represents a new level of payment: with its introduction, NFC-enabled Android mobile phones can be made suitable to accept payment by Mastercard or Visa cards. Erste Bank’s softPOS service does not have a connection or registration fee, and the service does not currently have a subscription fee, so providing the card acceptance costs the entrepreneur nothing, only a commission has to be paid for the traffic.
ERSTE BANK IS CONSTANTLY DEVELOPING
With softPOS, card acceptance is extremely simple: entrepreneur has to enter the required amount into the application – which can be activated by the small business after signing the contract, touch the card to the back of the device (where the NFC chip is on most phones) and it is done. The certificate can be received by the customer by e-mail or other electronic channels, but the softPOS is also technologically prepared so that a paper-based document can be created with a block printer connected to the mobile phone wirelessly (Bluetooth). Of course, the payment can not only be done with a card but also with a smartphone or smartwatch capable of doing so.
„Erste Bank is constantly developing its digital solutions to fully serve its customers. Retail customers of the Bank were the first to access mobile payment regardless of the chosen card company and mobile platform, i.e. they could pay with their mobile regardless of whether they had a Mastercard or Visa card, Android or iOS device. Launched in February, Bank’s digital platform has continuously being improved and brings a new level to day-to-day financial management, and services will soon include Google Pay.” said Zsuzsa Erdei, Small Business Leader at Erste Bank (Hungary).
