Sage North America’s Sage Payment Solutions and Roam Data have partnered to bring to market an integrated mobile payments offering for small and midsized businesses.

Through the partnership, Sage customers will be able to expand their payment options by accepting credit and debit cards on hundreds of different types of mobile phones and other mobile computing devices, including Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Motorola’s Droid and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, across all major wireless carriers.

 “The Roam Data solution allows for applications to be deployed to hundreds of smartphone types from various brands, which provides a consistent user experience across the many different platforms a company may employ,” said Greg Hammermaster, president of Sage Payment Solutions, McLean, VA.

“Device and network security are of critical importance,” he said. “Roam connects to the Sage Exchange environment, offering users end-to-end encryption, including for the hardware and swipe reader device, which is unique in the industry.”

Roam Data enables merchants to transact with their customers on mobile devices via its commerce applications. Its services also include end-user application provisioning, rights management and alerts

Sage ’s payment platform lets businesses and organizations accept all forms and methods of payment, including credit and debit cards, gift/loyalty cards, electronic bank accounts (ACH), paper checks and electronic check conversion.

Sage advice for merchants
Roampay, Roam Data’s mobile payment application, is being integrated to Sage Exchange, Sage’s Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) certified payments platform.

The Sage Exchange payments platform offers data integration to a wide range of Sage business management software products and third-party business platforms, maximizing the value of SMBs’ business systems with automatically updated credit and debit card transaction information.

Sage Exchange-connected Roampay services will be generally available later this year.

Using Roampay, Sage customers will be able to:

• Process credit and debit card orders, with real-time authorization

• Use an optional low-cost, secure card reader for card present transaction rates

• Log cash orders, download reports online and email receipts to their customers

• Change applications or add features to mobile apps that may benefit them

• Experience integration with their Sage accounting or enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform

Roam Data is also Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) certified.

Using Roampay, all customer data is encrypted before it leaves a customer’s mobile phone. No personal data is retained on the phone or mobile computing device.

Roampay turns mobile phones, tablets and PCs into secure point-of-transaction devices.

Last week, Sage Payment Solutions also announced a partnership with Ingenico, a worldwide supplier of payment services, which will let Sage customers use Ingenico’s credit card terminals with Sage Exchange connectivity to process payments, as well as enable access to data integration and two-way communication.

Roam Data is Ingenico’s mobile commerce service provider and strategic partner.

Huge opportunity
Mobile commerce is where ecommerce was 10 years ago—however, it is gaining adoption five times faster than ecommerce did, per Roam Data.

“The current state of mcommerce is still in its infancy,” said Will Graylin, CEO of Roam Data, Boston. “Major market companies don’t know their options, and they don’t know all of the risks.”

That said, moving money and sensitive business information on a mobile device is the future—the question is only when, not if.

The other question is how, and there are two schools of thought when it comes to mobile commerce: going through the browser on the mobile device or via a dedicated application.

“We at Roam believe that mobile commerce is most secure and most scalable if processed through a mobile application,” Mr. Graylin said. “With Roam’s platform, we authenticate each device, providing end-to-end encryption, even from our external swipe peripheral, something browser-based applications cannot do.

“We can also provide a better user experience by allowing faster transaction speeds, since we don’t have to refresh the screen every time data is entered,” he said.

“Sage Payment Solutions has made a progressive move to be an innovative leader in the mobile commerce and technology space, giving SMBs the promise of secure integration of all of their critical business functions on the phone they already own, starting with secure mobile payments.”

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Commerce Daily