TSYS  and Equinox Payments, a leading provider of payment terminals, applications and support services, today announced the availability of a semi-integrated payments solution to help Value-Added Resellers (VARs) quickly and easily develop and release EMV-certified technology to their customers. Running on the Equinox Apollo terminal, the Voyager application is an EMV-certified solution with features specifically designed for lodging, as well as retail and restaurant environments.

“Our new solution developed with Equinox allows VARs and their merchants to get on the right side of the EMV liability shift,” said Craig Ludwig, group executive, TSYS’ Merchant Services segment. “By leveraging the TSYS-certified Equinox Apollo terminal as a semi-integrated solution, developers can accelerate their EMV deployment using a suite of tools to integrate their point-of-sale (POS) solution. We’re proud to offer our clients a robust solution that not only reduces the costs and time required for EMV certification, but also provides advanced security features, including encryption and tokenization, to guard against credit card fraud.”

“We’re excited to offer VARs the ability to interface with our semi-integrated solution so that they can quickly implement EMV and contactless payments while reducing the headaches associated with annual PCI compliance validation,” said Rob Hayhow, vice president, Equinox. “The EMV certification process is complex, so this approach equates to an ‘easy button’ for VARs.”

The EMV liability shift exposes merchants to an increase in chargebacks — which impacts their bottom line — and many of the legacy terminal solutions that support lodging functionality are retiring this summer because they cannot be upgraded to support EMV. As a result, many small- and mid-sized hotel operators — and the VARs that support them — are left without a viable solution to support features such as check-in/check-out, deposits, no-shows, incremental purchases and quick-stay transactions. The Voyager payment application supports a host of important features for the retail, restaurant and lodging industries. Payment amounts are passed from the POS to the Apollo terminal, which directly communicates to the processor for authorization, reporting the results back to the POS for transaction completion and receipt printing. No sensitive card data is shared with the POS.

The Voyager application — compatible for stand-alone and semi-integration — is certified to support up to 20 multi-merchant configurations, as well as TSYS Guardian EncryptionSM and TSYS Guardian TokenizationSM. The solution also supports Visa’s Quick Chip and MasterCard’s M/Chip Fast processing. These options allow consumers to insert and immediately remove their chip card, mimicking the speed of a traditional magnetic stripe transaction.

“Visa is pleased to see TSYS and Equinox help more businesses become chip-ready with a pre-certified chip solution,” said Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of Risk Products, Visa Inc. “By integrating Quick Chip, the Equinox Voyager solution can enable faster transactions and simpler chip implementations, bringing the security benefits of chip technology to more consumers and merchants.”

EMV is a registered trademark or trademark of EMVCo LLC in the United States and other countries.