Payment Ponderings - A GPC Blog

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Driving Revenue Growth in Caribbean Financial Institutions with Data Analytics

Data analytics has become an indispensable tool for businesses worldwide, and the financial institutions in the Caribbean are no exception. The region's dynamic economic landscape, coupled with rapidly evolving customer expectations, necessitates innovative strategies to stay competitive. By harnessing the power of data analytics, financial institutions in the Caribbean can unlock valuable insights, enhance decision-making, and create personalized experiences that drive revenue growth. Let’s explore how data analytics can be a game-changer for revenue generation in Caribbean financial institutions.

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Leveraging APIs & Strategic Partnerships for Innovation and Growth

In today's rapidly evolving financial landscape, where technology continues to reshape the industry, financial institutions in the Caribbean and Latin America are increasingly turning to API integration and strategic partnerships to unlock new opportunities. By leveraging application programming interfaces (APIs) and forming collaborative alliances, financial institutions can expand their service offerings, enhance customer experience, and foster innovation. Let’s look at the benefits of API integration and strategic partnerships for financial institutions operating in the Caribbean and Latin America.

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Dynamic Currency Conversion

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) is a process that allows cardholders to choose the currency they want to use for their international transactions. When a cardholder is traveling abroad and makes a transaction in a foreign currency, the transaction is automatically converted into their home currency at the point of sale or ATM. This is done using a currency conversion rate that is determined by the card issuer or the ATM operator. It is a feature that has been gaining traction in recent years and can be very beneficial to Canadian ISOs. Let’s take a closer look.

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Financial Institutions and Fintechs – Friend or Foe?

Large financial institutions (FIs) are historically not known for innovation in financial products or services, and before recent times, the financial industry as a whole, was known to be traditional and not very innovative. In fact, one could argue that the last great financial innovation was the credit card. However, necessity breeds innovation, as the saying goes. And as the financial crisis that began in 2008 hit, alternative financial instruments, methods of payments and a multitude of fintechs sprung up to address various financial needs and gaps in the network of payment services. Still, the inconveniences felt from users in the traditional banking system wasn’t quite enough to propel these alternative payment methods into popularity. Fast forward 12 years, and a global pandemic of unseen proportions accelerated the conditions for fintech growth and the drastic need for alternative payment options. Whilst banks were still considered trustworthy, the continued frustration in the banking operating systems, as compared to the upcoming tried and tested alternative payment options, propelled innovation in the financial sector.

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ATM Trends for ISOs 2023

The now three-year-old pandemic accelerated chatter in the payments world that cash was quickly going to become irrelevant in today’s society. The use of card payments, online payments and contactless everything trended upwards at an accelerated rate. Indeed, businesses whose main stream of income was cash-related, suffered serious blows. Many were forced to pivot their business models, but the pandemic was devastating to those whose business was dependent on cash.

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ATM Trends for FIs 2023

The not-so-distant pandemic had everyone thinking that cash was on its way out. The use of card payments, online payments and contactless everything trended upwards at an accelerated rate. Indeed, businesses whose main stream of income was cash-related, suffered serious blows. Many were forced to pivot their business models, but the pandemic was devastating to those for whom this was not an option.

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GPC and Compass Plus Technologies celebrate 10 years of ground-breaking payments innovation

Global Processing Centre (GPC), one of the largest payments processors in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Compass Plus Technologies, an international provider of retail banking and electronic payments software, are celebrating 10 years of successful collaboration.

GPC’s journey with Compass Plus Technologies started in 2012, when the processor embarked on a project to migrate away from its legacy system to launch a modern, scalable issuing and acquiring payments platform to better serve financial institutions (FIs) in Latin America and the Caribbean. This was to help GPC meet its strategic vision to facilitate a strong financial ecosystem and payment architecture, and provide convenient, secure and modern payment services to FIs in the region. Impressively, the migration of the processor’s entire card base and POS terminal network was completed in just three months.

Since then, GPC and Compass Plus Technologies have worked together over the past decade to deliver many exciting projects including:

  • Multiple integrations with third parties such as Western Union to support prepaid card loading
  • Enabling in-branch instant card issuance
  • Supporting Fintech customers by offering them TranzAxis in a Platform as a Service capacity in order to launch innovative products at speed
  • Launching SugaPay, a local payment ecosystem consisting of reloadable cards, POS terminals and a mobile wallet, which facilitated card payment acceptance for small businesses at large-scale entertainment events in Antigua
  • Enabling Mastercard, Visa and UnionPay POS acquiring for merchants
  • Supporting GPC’s expansion into the Canadian Independent ATM deployer (IAD) market, with acquiring services for Visa, Mastercard and Canadian Interac

Today, Compass Plus Technologies empowers GPC to deliver premium payment processing solutions globally to retail ATM operators, financial institutions and Fintechs across the Caribbean, Latin America and Canada, processing over 700,000 transactions monthly.

“From day one of our partnership, Compass Plus Technologies has provided us with the technology, skills and expertise we needed to expand and grow. They have played a big part in the development of our business, helping us solve the unique challenges we face and to deliver better experiences to our customers. We have enjoyed working together over the past decade and have grown to become long-term strategic partners. We look for to continuing our work to revolutionise the payments market.” commented Justin Stuart-Young, Head of Information Technology at Global Processing Centre.

Carlos Seer, AVP, Business Development Director at Compass Plus Technologies, said: “We’re extremely excited to have reached such a significant milestone in our partnership with GPC. It is an honour to work with such a forward-thinking business, helping them grow and expand their offering to better serve FIs and merchants across North America and the Caribbean. GPC have built a market-leading processing business using our technology and we are excited about what the future of our partnership will bring in terms of further innovations and developments.”

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ATM Security - are your ATMs vulnerable?

Cybercriminals targeting ATMs and POS machines had to take a break with the rest of the world during the pandemic as worldwide lockdowns forced the closures of brick-and-mortar businesses, restaurants and stores. Online business surged and in-person cash and card transactions dipped. However, two years on, as business returns to normal and people go back to pre-pandemic ways of spending, the cybercriminals are back and, it seems, with a vengeance!

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