Epson develops Omnilink Merchant Services to provide ISVs with real-time customer receipt data

Epson is developing a new cloud-based service for ISVs and retailers, named Omnilink Merchant Services. This cloud-based service will be available on a monthly subscription, and will allow retailers and ISVs to unlock the full potential of the valuable customer information held within the receipt data.

Unlike similar initiatives, the key advantage of Omnilink Merchant Services is that data will be processed in real time, and delivered to the ISV in a timely enough fashion to react rapidly to changes in customer behaviour or offer instant rewards.

It’s designed to work by transmitting receipt data from web-connected point-of-sale printers to Epson’s secure servers, where the information is parsed and then accessed by approved independent software companies in a structured JSON format. This lets them quickly transform and provide the digital data to retailers in the form of intelligent business insights or customer experience solutions and allows retailers to offer loyalty schemes, issue vouchers and send electronic receipts without the time and expense of parsing raw receipt data.

Marc Tinkler, head of product marketing, Epson Europe, says, “The amount of invaluable customer information hidden within the code of every receipt is quite remarkable, especially when you consider just how many transactions are made every day. However, for reasons of logistics and cost, retailers and ISVs are not always able to take full advantage of this data.

Marc Tinkler, head of product marketing, professional printing, Epson Europe, says, “The amount of invaluable customer information hidden within the code of every receipt is quite remarkable, especially when you consider just how many transactions are made every day. However, for reasons of logistics and cost, retailers and ISVs are not always able to take full advantage of this data. Omnilink Merchant Services will take that burden away from them, and instead provide them with just the data they need, in real time, and in a format instantly usable for business intelligence, electronic receipts, loyalty schemes, data analysis and other applications yet to be imagined. We’re very excited to see what ISVs can do with the data we supply them in the future.”

Omnilink’s software-as-a-service solutions are simple and fast to implement, and require no modification of existing POS infrastructure, making them very affordable and easy to set up with no downtime. Receipt data will be processed in secure storage in a European location. The service will be ISO/ICE 27017 certified and adheres to upcoming GDPR compliance requirements.

Partners are already trialling Omnilink Merchant Services in Germany and the UK and are being showcased at EuroCIS (27 February 2018 to 1 March 2018, Düsseldorf, Germany) and RBTE 2018 (2-3 May 2018, London, UK).

Key features:

• Cloud-based service that receives and parses text-based receipt data

• Allows ISVs to develop data-based solutions without the time and expense of parsing raw receipt data

• Opens up opportunities to retailers to access the ISV's services without the modification of existing POS infrastructure

• Simple, fast implementation of uploading and processing

• Automatically delivers data to ISV in real time

• Fast, convenient delivery of receipt data in an industry standard structure

• No modification of existing POS software necessary to enable advanced SaaS solutions

• Available on Epson’s industry defining, market leading TM-T88 product.