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™.

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.

Backgrounder
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Contact:
Fryske Helms
PR Manager
fhelms@datapipe.com
201.792.1918 ext 279