Avoid payment system outages with effortless integrations from Evolve

We’ve all seen the news recently, with some of the high street’s biggest retailers and fast-food chains suffering IT outages that have scared and infuriated their customers. Inevitably, such outages mean a loss of revenue and, more importantly, potentially irreparable damage to customer trust.

Avoiding outages like these is essential, but in our interconnected world, where payments need to move at lightning speed, that means more businesses require integrations with third-party data centres. And that means gaining access to that third party’s most sensitive assets and data.

Understandably, data centre owners want evidence of the strongest integration expertise to ensure no disruption to their systems and to protect customer and business data. The fact is that most companies typically won’t allow external companies into their data centres. Only a few select providers are trusted to handle such complex integrations completely. Evolve is one of them.

That’s because it has been doing integrations for nearly 20 years and occupies a unique space, bridging the gap between IT companies with little payment experience and payment aggregators with little IT experience.

Evolve was created in 2005 to help multi-site businesses, from retail, food-to-go, hospitality, transport, forecourts, construction, property, and smart cities, keep their payment processes protected and connected. The team’s experience with IT connectivity, hardware, and software installation means that no matter which customer Evolve serves, in whatever sector, it can work out their unique needs and what they need from a payment perspective, get them integrated quickly with third-party data centres, and pick up their payment network so they can accept and route payments without any hassle.

Secure payment integrations built on deep trust

Evolve has worked with some of the world’s biggest payment aggregators, like TNS, who have required access to thousands of banks and businesses and connections to payment providers around the world. Evolve is trusted to install physical hardware in the TNS Data Centre, which no other provider has ever been granted access to, a testament to the quality and security of our integrations. We’re also trusted by BT Cardway, another major payment aggregator that only works with verified partners subject to the strictest due diligence.

So, with several integrations across two of the world’s biggest payment aggregators in multiple data centres, what that means from a payment perspective is that whatever payment provider you are using or want to use, Evolve can provide a direct integration into that payment provider. It can handle payment network migration and switches to different data centres, all underpinned by robust resilience and security so your operations are never disrupted. If for whatever reason one data centre stops working, your operations will instantly be mirrored and fall over to the next one, so your payments never stop working.

This is a capability no other provider has.

Let’s say your payment provider has an outage, you lose confidence in their ability, or you simply find a better deal elsewhere and you decide to put your payments through another provider. To do that, you now need to go through the process of negotiating agreements and contracts, get permission to enter the new provider’s data centre, and install new lease lines, circuits, switches, and hardware, along with all configuration and routing work. It’s incredibly complex, costly, and time-consuming to go through all these processes.

But Evolve can move your payments to another provider instantly at the automatic flick of a switch because we have already done the hard integration work for you. Put simply, it taps into payment infrastructure that no other provider can get close to.

Because of the trust Evolve has gained with various payment aggregators and the strength of our connectivity solutions, it is uniquely positioned to help companies avoid the damaging payment system outages that have afflicted various companies in recent months. Traditionally, companies rely on a single payment provider, but if that provider goes down, then the company can’t take payments and stops trading, leading to potentially catastrophic revenue losses.

Because Evolve has links to so many different payment providers, we can advise companies on load balancing the amount of traffic they put through each provider. If for whatever reason one provider goes down, Evolve can help companies reroute payments through another provider. In-built resiliency like that helps to avoid the payment outage pitfalls we’ve all seen in the news recently.

The importance of PCI compliance in data centre integrations

Evolve boasts plenty of technical know-how, having done many data centre integrations globally. But trust lies at the heart of each of these integrations—in fact, the Evolve team is trusted by more than 60 gateways, platforms, and hosts to work directly within their data centres. A big reason for that is that Evolve is a Platinum Partner of network management company Mako Networks, which is certified to PCI DSS Level 1, the strongest payment data security standard in the world.

PCI refers to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a set of security standards designed to ensure that sensitive financial information is kept safe from theft, hacking, and other security threats. Data centre users or owners of the storage, processing, or transmission process must meet PCI requirements annually.

Evolve combines best-in-class tech with the PCI-certified trust that data centre owners need to be assured that their payment data and operations will be secured and continue uninterrupted. What this all adds up to for Evolve’s customers is seamless integration—a one-stop-shop for secure network management that is fit for purpose for even the largest multi-site brands, including:

· TNS: This connectivity and infrastructure-as-a-service leader trusts Evolve to connect to 250 different payment hosts across the world, such as WorldPay, First Data, and Euronet.

· Home Bargains: A major UK retailer, Home Bargains trusts Evolve to support it to route payments from each of its sites to its data centre.

· HTEC: This global consulting, engineering, and product development company trusts Evolve to integrate card and credit processing for fuel sites such as ESSO.

· KFC: One of the world’s best-known restaurant chains, KFC trusts Evolve to integrate with its data centre to allow individual KFC sites to connect to their corporate network.

Contact Evolve for more information: info@evolvebg.co.uk or https://www.evolvebg.co.uk/.