Software Compliance is the term used to cover the management of the application software in the Skyzer terminal fleet, and ultimately, the ongoing security and compliance of the New Zealand payments industry.
By way of background, in 2012 a number of important new requirements were introduced into the New Zealand payments market around ensuring that EFTPOS terminals are kept in a compliant state for the duration of their service life.
Among these new requirements, all terminal Vendors operating in the New Zealand market, now have a legal responsibility to ensure that payment devices deployed to the field are kept up to date with current software. Whilst we continue to drive innovation in the New Zealand payments market, we also need to share the responsibility of safeguarding the security of electronic payments from potential fraudsters, hackers and scammers.
With the ever-increasing pace of technological change in the payments arena, we expect that the frequency of EFTPOS terminal software releases will increase.
It’s important to note that these new requirements for participants in the payments market are compulsory – not optional – for us all to operate in New Zealand.
This has prompted Skyzer to consider how to provide sustainable long term software support long after the device is sold and deployed to the field.
The solution was to introduce a modest monthly software licence fee payable per terminal. Under this software licence, a terminal will receive unlimited software upgrades, as and when they become available, using Skyzer’s remote Terminal Management System. This will ensure that both Eftpos Re-sellers and their customers will no longer have to worry whether their software is compliant and up to date, and will also minimize the risk of fraud by maintaining the highest possible level of software compliance.