In a commoditized and highly competitive market where margins depend on efficiency, reliability and low customer churn, acquirers and processors that rely on a single connectivity provider are leaving their business vulnerable to the fallout of major outages.
When a network outage happens, consumers and businesses can’t process transactions, access the internet, or make calls. This leads to merchants not being able to process credit or debit transactions – they must close shop for the day or accept alternate payment methods.
Connection problems are far from minor inconveniences. They’re a killer for customer loyalty and so a major risk to revenue. They also drive downstream costs in the shape of calls into the help center and, eventually, brand damage (customers won’t care that it was ultimately a carrier issue).
Network Redundancy More Important Than Ever
These outages highlight the growing importance of network redundancy in society and in the global economy. As that dependency grows, so too do expectations of reliability – and the level of frustration among consumers and businesses when connectivity fails. Major outages illustrate the strategic imperative for acquirers and processors to improve resiliency of their infrastructure, to make sure customers can keep doing business whatever the world throws at them.
And the SIM solution that can best deliver that is the Global Wireless Access (GWA) SIM from TNS: A smart multi-carrier SIM that switches to the best performing network. So when one network experiences an outage, merchants can keep doing business.
A Smart Multi-Carrier SIM, Engineered for Payments
In a nutshell, GWA is a smart multi-carrier SIM, delivered as a secure and fully managed service. It uses intelligent routing software to switch to a different network automatically and independently if it detects any interruptions to the data channel unlike standard IOT or M2M SIMs. This helps deliver seamless connectivity for POS terminals so that mission-critical transactions go through every time.
In contrast to many telco or generic IOT SIMs, which have “preferred” network settings that force them to connect to the lowest cost roaming partner, our GWA SIMs are configured purely for service quality. That means it is a completely agnostic solution. It can roam freely across hundreds of networks, while all traffic is delivered to acquirers and processors over TNS’ private PCI DSS certified network.
The result is maximum uptime. Payment terminals and systems stay connected, even during a major network outage, meaning fewer calls into the help desk and lower risk of customer churn or brand damage.
Who’s Next, and Where?
We never know when or who the next major outage will strike, or at what scale. In terms of risk management, that makes it difficult for acquirers to develop and resource a suitable reactive plan. On top of this, managing customer communications and expectations during these periods is made harder by the fact that when (not if) there’s an outage, acquirers are on the carrier’s timetable when it comes to a resolution.
So, it’s better for acquirers to be proactive and eliminate the risk altogether. And the smart choice is a smart SIM from TNS – the company with 30 years of experience focusing exclusively on payments. We are already trusted today by the world’s largest and leading acquiring banks and processors to handle their POS transaction traffic reliably and securely.
Many depend on our GWA SIM solution to access a network they can trust via a smart multi-carrier SIM they can count on.
Contact us today to discover how the combination of multi-carrier Smart SIM, our technical expertise and business experience combine to result in a better quality of service for merchants, fewer connection problems and therefore lower total cost of ownership for acquirers and processors versus other SIM card solutions.