Green Hills Adds StoreNext Connected Payments to its In-Store Tech Lab

Community-based independent Green Hills’ in-store lab, The Center for Advanced Retail Technology (CART), plans to install and showcase StoreNext’s Connected Payments in its Syracuse, N.Y., store.

Connected Payments is an electronic payments solution developed to provide fully integrated PIN-pad-to-processor data encryption and data security while reducing PCI compliance costs by removing all card data from the store. Connected Payments is also designed to cut overall administrative and payments interchange expenses for independent grocers and regional chains by more than 25 percent.

“It is a well-known fact that interchange and processing fees often surpass profit margins for independent stores,” said Berkeley Hawkins, VP of CART. “By also easing the burden of PCI compliance while protecting shoppers from card fraud, Connected Payments an important milestone for independents’ efforts to compete and succeed in today’s market.”

According to Hawkins, Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing have become established models for delivering applications, putting the most powerful software in the hands of even the smallest operators on a subscription basis and eliminating almost all upfront investment. This is important to realizing CART’s Retail 3.0 vision for advanced retail business practices, since the crucial linking of shoppers to their purchases and behavior is most practically — and economically—accomplished via these Web-based technologies.

“The shopper is fast becoming the focus of the entire supply chain,” said Hawkins. “As the industry moves toward Retail 3.0, independent operators have been, unsurprisingly, some of the first to capitalize on this key movement. CART’s showcasing of Connected Payments is very significant, since it exemplifies how independent grocery operators now have sophisticated technologies that were once the exclusive province of the largest chains. We see StoreNext leading the way by making such cutting-edge services cost-effective for even the smallest grocer.”