Poundland, Europe's largest single price retailer, has just gone live with a chip and PIN rollout in its UK stores.
Although its business has been built on single-price, cash payments alone, Poundland wanted to offer customers greater flexibility at the checkout.
The retailer decided that implementing chip and PIN would meet the growing demand in store for secure card payments and provide a platform for future payment methods like contactless, mobile phone top-ups and loyalty or gift cards.
Mike Gray, Poundland IT controller, said: "Introducing a card payment system gives our customers more flexible payment options and opens up the possibility to other services."
Following a successful trial of a Chip and PIN system from card payment processing specialist Commidea in 13 sites last November, Poundland is now enjoying faster transaction speeds and increased sales, as customers can now use card payments to pay for multiple items.
Commidea's Ocius for PCs is a fully-managed, internet protocol (IP)-based system, allowing Poundland to ensure its point-of-sale (POS) card transactions are Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant, as well as covered by the chip and PIN fraud regulations brought in for the UK last year.
"We needed a pre-tested, bank approved solution that was affordable and could be quickly installed," said Gray. "Commidea [offered] a bespoke solution that met all our requirements and could be up and running in double-quick time."
He added that the rollout involved work to overcome business obstacles, such as concerns about card payments lengthening queues, the need not to print receipts for every transaction and integration with its existing POS hardware.
And Poundland is also using Commidea's web-based reporting and management information system, WebCom, that comes as standard with Ocius system.
