Whenever the Y not Stop chain opens a new location, they prefer to launch a pre-opening marketing campaign to local businesses and incent them with free foodservice specials to drive early traffic to the store. This helps the management team train their employees on how to manage the operation in a pre-production environment, so they work out the kinks of their operation while building immediate goodwill with the local community at the same time.

Since this is the first drive-thru operation for their established foodservice business, Nick’s IT team essentially replicated the iOrder kiosk menu on the Topaz POS terminal that is installed in the drive-thru lane using chain-menus. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served at this location and since the Topaz POS terminal is integrated into the Verifone’s Kitchen Management System, cashier orders entered directly onto Topaz appear on screen in the order queue for the foodservice operation staff to prepare.

When a customer enters the drive-thru lane, they immediately see the menu board for selecting their foodservice items. There is a speaker where they are greeted by an associate that is able to enter the customer’s order on the Topaz register. As items are entered into the Verifone Topaz register, they appear on the Order Confirmation Board that is positioned on the stanchion supporting the speaker, so the customer sees the items that they are purchasing. Once the order is completed, a total appears at the bottom of the Order Confirmation Board and the drive-thru customer proceeds to the payment and order pick-up window.

Once at the payment window, the customer is greeted by a cashier associate who asks the customer if they would like to add anything else to their order as they wait for their made-to-order food to be prepared. “We wanted to make all of the in-store items available to drive-thru customers as well for their convenience. We have installed a five-door cooler in the drive-thru area where customers may select additional beverages.  We have sweet and salty snacks as well as cigarettes and other tobacco products that they can add to their ticket,” Nick said. “We really wanted to bring the in-store experience to our drive-thru customers.”

Although it is early your Alexandria store’s operation, how would you rate the success of the drive-thru operation? “We are thirty plus days into the operation at this point, it was slow the first few days, as customers were getting used to the store being open for business. Every day is better than the last, but the slow start was a good thing since our associates are all thumbs at first.”  Nick chuckled. “Our cashiers are getting more confident with every shift and as their service levels ramp up, they are able to handle the increased load every day. The busiest time during our day for us is the lunch period which is concentrated between the hours of 11:30am and 1:00pm. Breakfast and dinner periods tend to be spread over a several more hours so getting to the point where we are hitting on all cylinders during the lunch rush is critical to build a solid reputation for quality foodservice products and speedy service within the local community.”

“Working with the Verifone Foodservice team was easy. The new Drive-Thru lane equipment (Order Confirmation Board, Speaker and cashier headsets) was installed in two days. We had planned a whole day for debugging the new system, and when I arrived at the store 30 minutes after my team started the installation, the technician said he was finished and everything was working perfectly,” Nick shared.

As far as future projects are concerned, St. Romain Oil plans to fine tune their Alexandria operation for the next year in order to identify any design tweaks that they feel will improve the overall operation. “As we explore future site opportunities, we feel that designing a drive-thru operation into the overall site plan is an important step toward ensuring a smooth running operation. We are very happy we made the decision to go this route and are pleased with early results,” Nick indicated.

Verifone is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Coral Springs, Florida, that provides technology for electronic payment transactions and value-added services at the point-of-sale. Verifone sells merchant-operated, consumer-facing and self-service payment systems to the financial, retail, hospitality, petroleum, government and healthcare industries. The company’s products consist of POS electronic payment devices that run its own operating systems, security and encryption software, and certified payment software, and that are designed for both consumer-facing and unattended environments.

Its products process a range of payment types, including signature and personal identification number (PIN)-based debit cards, credit cards, contactless/radio frequency identification cards, smart cards, prepaid gift and other stored-value cards, electronic bill payment, check authorization and conversion, signature capture and Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT).

Francisco Partners Completes Acquisition of Verifone

Recently the company announced that it has been acquired by an investor group led by Francisco Partners, a leading technology focused private equity firm, and including British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. The acquisition was previously announced on April 9, 2018 and closed and became effective today.

With the transaction completed, Mike Pulli becomes Verifone’s new CEO.

“The closing of this transaction represents a new and exciting chapter for Verifone as we seek to continue the transformation of Verifone from a terminal sales company to a leading provider of payments and commerce solutions,” said Mike Pulli, CEO of Verifone. “Francisco Partners brings deep industry expertise in payments technology, systems and software that will help Verifone execute on its vision for the future. Together, we look forward to leveraging and further accelerating Verifone’s technology to drive value for Verifone’s merchant customers and channel partners around the world.”

“Verifone’s payments technology is critical to the operation of merchants around the world. We are excited to build upon Verifone’s strong platform to continue to drive growth and bring additional capabilities to Verifone’s customers,” said Peter Christodoulo, Partner at Francisco Partners. “We look forward to working with Mike and the Verifone team to strengthen the Verifone franchise and bring innovative payments and commerce solutions to Verifone’s customers.”

Verifone is transforming every day transactions into new and engaging opportunities for merchants and consumers at the last inch of payments and commerce. Powered by a growing footprint of more than 30 million devices in more than 150 countries, our people are trusted experts working with the world’s best-known retail brands, financial institutions, and payment providers. Verifone is connecting more products to an integrated solutions platform to better meet the evolving needs of our clients and partners. Built on a 35-year history of uncompromised security, we are committed to consistently solving the most complex payment challenges.

Introducing Verifone Navigator

Verifone today announced the introduction of Navigator, the first-of-its-kind payment feature with a fully integrated touchscreen to earn certification for accessibility and usability by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), a United Kingdom-based charity. Further, Navigator meets PCI requirements – an information security standard mandated and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to reduce credit card fraud.

Merchants around the world face accessibility and inclusivity challenges to ensure that payment hardware and software can be easily utilized by visually-impaired consumers. According to estimates by the World Health Organization, more than 217 million people live with moderate to severe vision impairment and another 36 million people worldwide have complete vision loss.

For visually-impaired consumers payment transactions present a unique challenge, particularly as payment devices continue to increasingly evolve toward touchscreens. Verifone Navigator delivers the ultimate solution.

“The change to touchscreen technology from the physical PIN pad is likely to be a difficult one for many blind and partially sighted people,” said David Clarke, Director of Services at RNIB. “But the change is coming, so we’re pleased to be working with Verifone to make sure that new payment hardware and software in the form of Navigator is accessible and usable for the millions of people living with sight loss worldwide. After rigorous testing, we are delighted to certify Navigator’s use by businesses that want to improve the experience for the blind and partially-sighted community.”

Navigator enables merchants to transform the non-tactile touchscreen into a universal keypad with audio confirmation, so visually-impaired consumers can enter a PIN or other numerical data to easily make purchases.

“Secure payment is and always will be a universal concern for merchants and consumers alike. It is a constant that will remain even as the touchscreen trend overtakes the payment experience,” said James Wester, Research Director for IDC. “Unfortunately, some merchants will use a plastic overlay with raised numbers that temporarily sits on top of touchscreen devices allowing the visually impaired to input their PIN. That not only fails to deliver an elegant touchscreen experience, it is not secure and can lead to cases of skimming.”

Navigator is PCI PTS 5.x approved and will initially be available throughout North America and Brazil. The first-of-its-kind software is available now on Verifone’s Carbon 10, a countertop or portable point-of-sale device that features merchant and customer facing tablets for optimal business management and customer interaction.

“We are proud to have taken the leadership position in developing Navigator, which we are offering up as an industry standard, applied to payment devices and other, everyday touchscreen technologies like ATMs and kiosks,” said Verifone. “Verifone is committed to creating a better, more secure and inclusive payment experience for merchants and consumers around the world.”

Awards & Accolades

Verifone’s 2Checkout monetization platform has been named Best Subscription Billing Solution and Best Payments Solution of 2022 at the annual SIIA CODiE™ Awards. Now in its 35th year, the SIIA CODiE Awards are the industry’s only peer-reviewed awards program to recognize companies that develop the most innovative business technology products across the world. The 2Checkout all-in-one monetization platform has been awarded SIIA distinctions for the past 10+ years, either as a finalist or a winner, earning honors for the best-in-class solution in multiple categories.

“Verifone salutes the CODiE 2022 awards for its recognition of the 2Checkout monetization platform — the latest confirmation that our investments and developments effectively tackle market needs and positively impact merchants’ bottom lines. We remain committed to our focus on facilitating fast go-to-market deployment for businesses and generating new revenue uplift opportunities for merchants, which we deliver on through a modular, all-in-one solution with out-of-the-box tools and market differentiating payments and subscription capabilities,” said Bulent Ozayaz, President, EMEA, at Verifone.