NEW YORK-U.S. Wireless Data Inc. has begun providing its trademarked Synapse to bridge the divide between rural farmers and their city customers.
The pilot program, involving wireless point-of-sale terminals at 45 urban Green Markets in New York state, represents just one way the company “is breathing life into old data networks,” said Dean M. Leavitt, chairman and chief executive officer.
U.S. Wireless Data, headquartered in New York, has carrier agreements with AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Motient and Verizon Wireless Inc. Its technology is agnostic as to device and network and could work via Bluetooth or satellite communications, for example.
“Right now, three carrier networks drive this, but Nextel (Communications Inc.) and some of the domestic GSM carriers have begun to make some noise about it,” Leavitt said.
If the four-month trial succeeds, the idea is to expand the program to all of the country’s 33,000 urban Green Markets, where phone lines and electrical outlets typically are lacking.
Farmers offering their fresh and comparatively cheap produce directly to consumers have been losing food-stamp recipients as customers due to a U.S. Department of Agriculture decision five years ago designed to reduce fraud. The federal agency has replaced paper purchasing certificates with Electronic Benefit Transfer cards.
Tillsmith Systems has loaned farmers willing to evaluate the program its battery-operated wireless point-of-sale terminals, which incorporate the Synapse platform. Those participants willing to pay processing costs have opted to activate functions on the terminals that permit payment transactions using Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards and Automated Teller Machine cards.
“The big boys like MasterCard and Visa are beginning to understand the value now. They’re seeing possibilities for transactions they would not otherwise see at more points of sale: buses and taxis, Mary Kay and Avon, fast-food restaurants, in-home services like plumbers and electricians,” Leavitt said.
“When people think wireless, they think mobility, but the real advantage is speed. It takes two-to-five seconds vs. 20 seconds for a dial-up authorization.”
U.S. Wireless Data also has a pilot program under way for wireless point-of-sale payment at the most heavily trafficked Burger King restaurant in the country, located across the street from the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The company also is in discussions with restaurateurs about equipping waiters and waitresses with these devices, as is happening already in some European establishments.
“It’s getting down to belt-wear size, so it could be a component of a cell phone or an interactive pager with a point-of-service program on it,” Leavitt said.
In addition to Tillsmith, U.S. Wireless Data works with six other terminal manufacturers: Dassault AT of America, Hypercom, LinkPoint, Lipman USA, MIST, Symphony, CellGate Technologies.
CellGate and AT&T Wireless are in trials of an interim step to help foster the transition from “a huge installed base of dial-up terminals,” Leavitt said. The mechanism is a plug-in box that sits atop the wireline device and enables it to conduct its transactions wirelessly. Doing so would halve the monthly operating cost to about $25, Leavitt said.
From a security standpoint, Synapse-enabled POS terminals offer better protection to consumers. For about $125 from consumer electronics stores, anyone today can buy a device to “pick up” credit, debit or other financial transaction card numbers transmitted via modem over an analog wireline connection, Leavitt said.
Wireless data networks offer dual encryption. In addition, the U.S. Wireless Data hosting facility in Colorado Springs, Colo. “is all firewalled, and none of our transactions go near the Internet,” he said.
“Synapse does protocol conversion into our proprietary protocol and also does message reformatting. Because all transactions go across our host, we can provide clients with reports, including online, real time reporting.”
