Newsroom
DataPipe chosen to host PowerPay tm Payment and Loyalty Solution
Hoboken, NJ - October 25, 2004 – SMART System Technologies, Inc. (SST) a New York-based RFID solutions
provider to the retail and sports industries, has enlisted the services
of DataPipe Managed Hosting Services to launch an innovative payment
and loyalty reward product called PowerPay tm.
RFID technology continues to gain attention for its potential as a payment and
identification system for consumers. PowerPay uses a merchant or
team-branded key fob that utilizes RFID technology along with a small
antenna to transmit a Unique Identifier (UID) for the consumer at
designated Points of Sale (POS). After the key fob is waved in front of
the PowerPay RF Reader, the POS transmits the UID to PowerPay’s secure
hosting environment at DataPipe. Once processed through the PowerPay
application host in DataPipe’s database server cluster, this consumer
provided data is in turn matched up to a number of promotions and
discounts provided by merchants who have adopted PowerPay.
Consumers register for PowerPay online, at the same time designating an existing
credit or debit card account to link to their PowerPay key fob.
PowerPay then analyzes the consumer transaction information and matches
it to the consumer's demographics to determine the best
merchant-supplied promotions to offer the consumers. While merchants
never receive any personal information about consumers, they are still
able to offer a bevy of loyalty rewards to consumers through their
individual accounts. Privacy of this entire process is maintained by
the PowerPay application operating within the secure hosting
environment managed by DataPipe.
Working with SST and their technology partners, DataPipe’s managed services teams created an
enhanced management solution that utilizes a load balanced and
redundant Web server and database server solution. The key to success
in maintaining this high availability solution relies upon a customized
configuration that removes all single points of failure. Due to its
need for maximum uptime, the engineered solution comes complete with
the essential components of automatic failover, rolling upgrades and
business resumption capabilities.
System security was very important to SST. Due to the financial nature of the PowerPay service,
protecting the hardware cluster and virtual network from any potential
areas of vulnerability was one of the main objectives that emerged
during these initial consultations. These concerns were addressed
through the SureDefend component of DataPipe’s SureSuite of services.
“We discussed many different alternatives for our managed solution,” said
Ray Garcia, Senior Vice President, Research and Development for SST.
“The true benefit of working with DataPipe is the degree to which we
can customize the set of managed services. One of our greatest concerns
with implementing the PowerPay application was managing security and
scalability of the hosted solution. DataPipe’s team offered us not only
a number of advanced solutions, but also a very competent team
dedicated to managing the PowerPay solution. Datapipe prepared a
managed service specifically to cater to the needs of our PowerPay
application.”
PowerPay is currently installed in NFL football stadiums in Detroit, Philadelphia and Seattle.
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