Pay SoftPos

Pay SoftPos allows a merchant to turn a commercial off-the-shelf mobile phone into a contactless payment terminal without requiring additional dedicated hardware. For merchants this offers mobile payment terminals at a different price point than existing mobile hardware terminals for EMV transactions.

It also allows merchants to utilize other mobile devices they already have and use, decreasing the number of devices to carry around and offering a standalone or more integrated experience.

The User Experience

The merchant installs the Pay SoftPos app on a mobile phone and presents the device and application to the payer. The payer taps the payment device and details of the EMV transaction are exchanged between the payment device and the Pay SoftPos app through the phone’s built-in NFC reader.

If a PIN is needed the application presents a PIN pad to the payer, who enters the PIN and confirms. Shortly after the outcome of the processing is presented.

Transactional Flow

The details from the transaction are sent to the backend, which in turn processes the information and relays it to a payment processor or acquirer, which eventually communicates with the payer’s card issuer.

Besides processing payments, the backend also manages the terminals and continuously attempts to attest that the Pay SoftPos application, or the platform it runs on, is eligible and not compromised.

Stand-Alone Or Integrated

The mobile application can run as a standalone application where the merchant enters an amount and completes a payment. It can also be integrated through APIs with another Android Point of Sales (POS) application on the same device or a POS system, that runs on a different platform and/or device, such as a Windows powered computer. The primary use case is typically to activate the app with a pre-entered amount.

This will require the AppSwitch SDK, which needs to be embedded in the Point of Sales (POS) app.

The features available are shown in the table below, and you can access the full set of APIs by contacting a sales representative.

For both standalone and integrated scenarios, it is only the Pay SoftPos app that is within the PCI-DSS certification scope. This makes it simpler for customers to complete the integration.

The Pay SoftPos app is delivered via Google Play Store. Mobile device management systems can orchestrate the installation on individual devices.