Contactless card and Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phone payments provide merchants and their customers with a brand new value proposition: Out go long lines, bulky wallets, cash handling costs and underutilized gift and loyalty programs and in comes fast check out with convenient “tap and go”, additional revenue, digital gift and loyalty cards and e-coupons as well as individualized promotions that will excite customers and differentiate the merchant’s business.

Using contactless payment technology, merchants will have the ability to forge stronger relationships and loyalty with their customers. Merchants will be able to provision over the air (OTA) gift and loyalty cards as well promotions, coupons, and marketing messages to a customers’ NFC-enabled mobile phone that is simply waved at the register to pay, redeem and win promotions and discounts, quickly and easily.

ViVOtech has developed a complete end-to-end solution that can be easily added to existing payment infrastructure, enabling merchants with 3rd generation payment and promotion systems. Merchants can implement this solution step-by-step, following the evolution of contactless technology available to consumers and reap massive benefits at every step:

Click on the icons below for a description of each solution:

ViVOtech Solutions for Phase 1. Contactless Credit and Debit

ViVOtech is the leading supplier of contactless payment readers for merchants globally. The best-selling ViVOpay line of contactless payment reader/writers can be found at movie theaters, fast food restaurants (QSR), specialty retail stores, casual dining establishments, convenience stores, gas stations, drug stores, grocery stores, buses, taxicabs, kiosks and vending machines.

ViVOpay easily enables existing merchant POS and ECR locations to accept contactless payments with minimal disruption to existing services and few changes. ViVOpay readers and writers also allow merchants to electronically accept coupons, promotions and tickets from their customers. ViVOpay readers come in several different packages and configurations to fulfill the specific needs of each merchant segment: Countertop, Integrated, Vending, Drive Thru, Pay-at-the-Table, OEM and more.

ViVOtech Solutions Phase 2: Contactless Gift and Loyalty

Leveraging the existing contactless reader infrastructure, ViVOtech enables merchants to issue contactless gift and loyalty cards to improve activation and usage of prepaid and customer loyalty programs. The ViVOfob contactless cards and fobs allow prepaid and loyalty cards to not only perform quick and easy transactions, but also to take any shape or form the merchant chooses – from key fobs to wristbands to watches — allowing merchants to create innovative branded payment devices that give them the desired "Top of the Wallet" effect. This flexibility means merchants can design to their customer’s preferences to create the easiest and most practical card format tailored to their customer base.

In conjunction with contactless cards and fobs, ViVOtech also provides the ViVOplatform transaction processing software for advanced prepaid and loyalty functionality. ViVOplatform provides retailers with a complete scalable and flexible software platform for advanced promotional and loyalty applications. By increasing customer usage of loyalty and gift/prepaid cards, ViVOplatform enables retailers to gather valuable data about consumer behavior and other key purchasing data and use that information to target specific consumer groups with real-time personalized promotions such as cross-selling, loyalty awards, discounts, and instant rewards at any time during the buying cycle.

ViVOtech Solutions Phase 3: NFC Mobile Phone Payments and Promotions

NFC technology will enable consumers to simply wave their phones close to a contactless-enabled POS and ECR system to make payments, redeem coupons, promotions and offers. ViVOtech provides the ViVOnfc mobile payment and OTA provisioning infrastructure software to leverage this technology to deliver the most enhanced consumer experience.

The ViVOnfc OTA provisioning solution enables merchants to provision prepaid (gift) and loyalty cards directly into NFC mobile phones, as well as to send targeted mobile marketing messages and promotions. With ViVOnfc, merchants will be able to create individualized promotion services, e-coupon, location-based loyalty and merchant cross-selling programs. This workflow will help merchants to more directly influence consumers’ behavior both inside and outside the store through a spam-free, secure and authenticated network.

Using the intuitive ViVOwallet application to manage cards, promotions and coupons in the mobile phone, consumers will merely wave the mobile phone directly at the contactless-enabled point-of-sale system for a quick and easy experience at the point of sale.