Jan 16, 2007__Fujitsu Transaction Solutions, a unit of of Fujitsu Japan, and Accelitec have integrated Accelitec's Paypilot suite of transaction solutions with Fujitsu's Globalstore point-of-sale (POS) and Customercenter loyalty applications.

The integration of Paypilot with Fujitsu's and Microsoft's retailing solutions is expected to allow retailers to manage their preferred choices of payment types and to build upon their customer loyalty programmes.

Customer transactions at the integrated POS can be tendered through automated clearing house (ACH), pre-paid or stored-value, credit card and loyalty accounts via RFID-based technology embedded in cards, key tags and cell phones. This enables retailers to manage payment types to reduce the cost of transactions, Fujitsu said.

Leveraging Fujitsu's Pervasive Retailing Framework, the Paypilot solution reportedly uses RFID technology to link the consumer to various touch points in the store such as POS, self service kiosks, self checkout, mobile devices and more. As consumers opt-in to their retailer's programmes, they will use the retailer-branded tags with embedded RFID chip to make their purchases, build their profiles, gather product information, and request a service in the store or on-line. The integration to Fujitsu's Globalstore and Customercenter represents the first of a series of planned developments that combine the capabilities of RFID-based transactions with core retailing technologies.

The Fujitsu/Accelitec solution is also understood to use Microsoft Windows Mobile to support near-field communication (NFC) with cell phones. Thus, Windows-based smart phones can perform contactless transactions. Because Paypilot is retailer-centric and not simply devoted to enabling contactless credit card transactions, Accelitec claims that there are many more customer-centric applications available to retailers that will leverage cell phones as next-generation customer interaction devices.

source: www.digitalmediaasia.com