USA Technologies Inc., a provider of networked cashless payments systems for vending machines and kiosks, today announced it has surpassed $5 million in cashless micro-transactions processed through its network in a single month. The company reached the milestone in September, when it processed a record 2.7 million transactions.

Stephen P. Herbert, president and COO of USA Technologies, says the milestone illustrates that consumers will continue the trend toward cashless transactions:

The $5 million processing milestone … (confirms) that consumers overwhelmingly prefer to use their credit and debit cards for everyday purchases and are increasingly more comfortable using them at self-service retail outlets like vending machines.

USA Technologies supports cashless transactions on 57,000 devices in the U.S. and Canada for more than 600 clients, the company says.

BURNABY, British Columbia — TIO Networks Corp., a multichannel expedited bill-payment processor, has announced that Budget PrePay Inc., one of the United States’ largest networks for marketing prepaid products, will process TIO bill payments at more than 5,000 of its locations in 45 states.

According to a news release, Budget PrePay will leverage TIO’s transactional billpay interface to gain access to TIO’s expedited bill-payment processing capabilities, which include wireless, utility and cable bill issuers.

With TIO’s processing capabilities, cash-preferred customers will be able to pay their wireless, utility and cable bills at Budget PrePay stores throughout the country. Customers will pay a service fee to use the expedited payment services.

The parties expect to activate the locations on the TIO network this summer and implement a marketing campaign to create greater awareness for the new services amongst Budget PrePay’s customer base and build transaction volumes.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. — New research from the IHL Group says transactions at self-service kiosks will surpass $775 billion in 2009 and will grow to more than $1.6 trillion by 2013. The IHL Group is an analyst firm and consultancy that serves retailers and retail technology vendors.
 
"We expect continued double-digit growth in the revenue generated by self-service transactions, particularly as retailers, restaurants and transportation authorities offer more devices in more locations," said Lee Holman, lead retail analyst for the IHL Group.
 
"Most consumers have adapted to self-service as a way of life," Holman said. "The current recession is actually increasing the acceptance of the technologies, as they are a hedge against increasing labor expenses during a tough economic climate. They allow companies to schedule their workforce for high-volume periods without sacrificing service during non-peak times."
 
In the market study “2009 North American Self-Service Kiosks,” IHL examines the increasing use of six types of payment-accepting kiosks: self-checkout systems, ticketing, check-in, food ordering, postal and other retail applications. The report details the number and types of kiosks shipped historically and provides forecasts for each type of kiosk, both in terms of units shipped and revenue transacted.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — INETCO Systems Limited, a business transaction management provider that delivers cross-tier visibility into ATM, POS and card-processing applications and networks, today celebrated the launch of INETCO Insight 4.5. This version of the software includes smart alerting capabilities for instant awareness of critical transaction events, powerful visualization and complete transaction correlation to help any user access rich transaction information and integrate it into existing applications for better management of critical business processes.
 
"With INETCO Insight 4.5, business and IT users can capitalize on powerful business transaction intelligence to achieve greater service efficiency and lower costs," said Bijan Sanii, president and chief executive of INETCO. "The value of this information grows exponentially as transaction processors and other financial service providers face increased operational complexity due to mergers and acquisition activity, consolidation and upgrade efforts, such as legacy modernization projects, virtualization, EMV and ACI's upcoming Base 24 transition."
 
INETCO Insight 4.5 captures complete information on every financial transaction as it moves across both internal and third-party service provider networks and applications. This rich transaction information can improve the efficiency of a wide variety of business processes, from customer service to fraud monitoring to application support, reducing the risk of downtime and fraud losses, decreasing overhead costs and improving customer satisfaction.
 
"Increased competition, market consolidation and convergence have complicated business matters for transaction processors, emphasizing a growing need for innovative ways to control costs, reduce the risk of revenue loss and improve service quality," said Pat Cridge, senior manager of operations for Open Solutions Canada. "Open Solutions Canada is using INETCO Insight 4.5 to manage eight unique electronic funds transfer channels and rely on its correlated information to ensure we can confidently meet the needs of our growing client base without incurring risk of service disruptions, additional support costs and redundant operational costs."
 
INETCO Insight 4.5 includes the following new features and enhancements:
 
Complete transaction correlation: Every important detail about every transaction is captured automatically, including field-level detail, transaction-path information, the linkage details between networks and application layer activity. This information is assembled end-to-end, across multiple links that often include third-party services. INETCO Insight provides the information that both line-of-business and IT users need to manage business transactions, saving hours of manual efforts, fragile scripts and costly inquiry requests.
 
Advanced statistical and event-based alerting: Gone are the senseless alerts that are often ignored. Built on a robust rules engine that lets the user assign severity levels and thresholds, alerts are more precise and meaningful. Triggered in response to user-defined groups and critical events, tailored alerts combine the complex logic gathered within the transaction fields and statistical information to meet specific business needs. Notify users through on-screen traffic light displays, e-mail alerts and syslog deliveries.
 
Powerful visualization: Whether it's a business manager or a frontline support person, user-defined Web-based dashboards provide a customized view of all relevant information in real time. Transaction analysis is enhanced with continuous access to eight days of historical information as well as drill-down and filtering capabilities to isolate transactions of interest, reduce mean time to repair and eliminate costly "blame-storm" sessions.  
 
Ease of deployment: Featuring network-based transaction capture capabilities, INETCO Insight was architected for ease of deployment within high volume transaction environments.  The software can be installed on a standard Microsoft Windows machine, with no agents or code changes required. It automatically writes information to standard databases and easily integrates with security, reporting and event management applications.

MoreRFID: 3M is helping libraries meet the challenges that come with increased traffic and circulation, which many facilities have seen during the economic downturn. The company recently installed its 3M SelfCheck Systems at locations of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, or PLCHC. With the help of 3M’s system, the area’s libraries moved more than 15 million items in 2008, representing an increase of more than 750,000 over the previous year.
 
Patrons were able to use the SelfCheck systems for approximately 90 percent of their transactions, and the PLCHC recorded more than 5.6 million visits last year. The library uses two of 3M’s self-service solutions at 12 of its branches.
 
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MALVERN, Pa. — USA Technologies announced today the availability of ePort SDK, a software version of its ePort cashless transaction technology that includes enhanced security features.
 
EPort SDK offers all the benefits of the traditional ePort device in a software package. Combined with the Company's ePort Connect Service for payment processing, consumer support and online reporting, the solution provides end-to-end encryption on all credit and debit card transactions.
 
"Ensuring the security for our customers is a priority at USA Technologies to counter identity theft and credit/debit card fraud," said Ron Fridman, VP of engineering with USA Technologies. "The ePort SDK software offers our customers financial security, from the swipe of their card, through the transaction and to the completion of the purchase."
 
The software-based ePort SDK is designed for applications in which a customer's unattended point of sale solution has computing power built in — overcoming the need for a standard ePort terminal. The ePort SDK software will run on both Linux and Windows based computing platforms.
 
The ePort SDK enables kiosks and other PC-based self-service retail locations to accept cashless payment. The product is particularly well suited to the kiosk market, where it is already being used by USA Technologies' customers including Merit Entertainment and Teknovation. The software is also designed for use with next generation vending machine controllers which are being developed by several vending manufacturers and their component suppliers.
 
The ePort SDK solution utilizes MagneSafe security technology from MagTek Inc. The MagneSafe encrypts financial card data inside the payment terminal read head at the time of the card swipe, and the data remains encrypted until the data is securely transferred to a payment processor.
 
"We take our responsibility to protect consumer card data very seriously and are committed to doing everything in our power to protect our customers from card fraud and ID theft," said Fridman. "The ePort SDK solution meets the industry's highest security standards."
 
USA Technologies was certified by Visa as a Level One PCI Service Provider earlier this year.

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CUPERTINO, Calif. — Solidcore Systems Inc., a provider of software to detect and prevent unwanted change, today introduced its S3 Control PCI Device edition, which enables retailers to achieve Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance with reduced time and expense.
 
The new solution eases the burden on merchants using Windows Embedded grocery, retail and hospitality self-service systems to meet the PCI DSS requirements and to document compliance, according to a news release. The PCI Device edition also protects sensitive bank card data by prohibiting viruses and malware from penetrating point-of-sale terminals, servers, ATMs and kiosks.
 
Device manufacturers and merchants have been in a difficult position of retrofitting fixed-function retail devices with more costly security applications that degrade device performance, such as antivirus software. Solidcore addresses these challenges with its S3 Control PCI Device edition, which is a small footprint, low-overhead change prevention solution that runs transparently on Windows Embedded devices.
 
"It has become essential for retailers to control access and ensure software integrity across the entire in-store electronic payments and POS environment," said Ray Carlin, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Retalix, and president and CEO of StoreNext Retail Technologies. "Solidcore has combined extremely effective lock-down protection with rapid deployment, and this enables our supermarket customers to protect data and sustain PCI compliance with reduced effort and cost."

ESSEN, Germany — VeriFone, a secure electronic payment solutions provider, will be hosting a drop-in Security Advisory Clinic May 6 at Kiosk Europe 2008. Visitors to the show can pick up a step-by-step guide to payment security and best practices and receive one-to-one advice and information about practical procedures that can be implemented to maintain security. 

DALLAS — TableTop Media has unveiled its wireless, interactive tabletop device with pay-on-demand capabilities.

BURNABY, British Columbia — TIO Networks Corp., an automated bill payment and non-bank financial network, and Work Software Systems, provider of Retail Management Systems to the Wireless dealers, have announced an agreement where TIO’s bill-payment processing services will be made available directly from the WorkWireless RMS solution, which is used by thousands of wireless dealer locations.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. · Source Technologies, provider of integrated solutions for managing financial transactions and other secure business processes, has been named as one of the top 500 small businesses in the United States (Div500) for a second consecutive year by DiversityBusiness.com, a leading multicultural Internet site. The companies listed on the Div500 represent the nation's top multicultural earners, ranging in revenue size from $20 million to more than $2 billion.

"We are very honored to receive the DiversityBusiness.com award for a second year in a row," said Bill Bouverie, president and chief executive of Source Technologies. "Receiving this award for a second time is a testament to our people, suppliers and manufacturing partners."

In addition to winning the DiversityBusiness award, Source Technologies was named to the FinTech 100 list of the international top vertical technology vendors serving the financial-services industry for a second consecutive year. In 2006, Source Technologies also was presented with recognition for Outstanding Achievements in Financial Self-Service at the 2006 Self-Service & Kiosk show.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Mar 15, 2006 - HP is celebrating more than a decade of providing unmatched variety, quality and value in computing technology with the introduction of new AMD processor-based products for business customers.
 
HP introduced its first AMD processor-based thin client as well as enhanced industry-standard x86 server offerings, which extend the company's portfolio to more than 30 products based on AMD processors.