Payment and
Loyalty Products

Convego System Commerce: Payment and loyalty solutions for retail, transport, and banking

Convego System Commerce is a system platform used to create card-based closed payment systems (Closed Loop Payment) for the retail, transportation, and banking industries. It combines EMV-compliant offline and online payments with a flexible solution for loyalty schemes. The platform comprises three of the main cornerstones for managing a total payment system: smartcard (or other format), terminal, and backend. All components can be managed as necessary by the parties involved in the payment cycle: host and system provider, bank, retailer, card issuer, and its agents.

Convego System Commerce closed-loop payment

Convego System Commerce allows cooperation and work-assignment processes to be managed beyond the scope of their specific business processes and company boundaries. This innovative approach can be used in a wide variety of business scenarios: from the issuing of personalized cards in a commercial establishment, through to combined payment and loyalty applications, and from an individual retailer card, through to a collective retail card issued by a number of banks and their distribution networks.

Thanks to Convego System Commerce, financial service providers, telecommunications operators, and retailers can integrate and run payment programs and loyalty schemes that have been tailored to their requirements in their existing system environment. Customers of these companies can then purchase the prepaid cards that have been produced using instant-issuing technology in bank branches, shops, hotels, supermarkets, gas stations, and other locations, and use them to make payments or collect bonus points.

A fully integrated system

Convego System Commerce is a fully integrated system that supports all functionalities from card issuing, through payment processing, to fleet management. It consists of a secure, rapid, and nationally accepted contactless offline payment card. There are separate management functions for each level and each stakeholder, ensuring that all individual requirements are fulfilled (e.g. for loyalty and bonus programs), while all financial functions are bundled in the back-end. Retailers, and transport and financial institutions benefit from this highly integrated and scalable system.

Banks can issue customer cards for retail through their branches, commercial establishments, or other channels. By introducing other value-added services for retail via a network of distribution channels that is greatly enhanced by the system, banks can effectively implement their portfolio of prepaid cards and loyalty program applications.

In turn, retailers benefit from the system in that they can expand their customer network, individualize their card issuing services, and initiate daily discount and loyalty campaigns. Financial and static functions, including processing and accounting, post-processing, and data analysis of the customers' financial transactions and consumer behavior, help them to manage their businesses more efficiently and successfully.

Transport companies can use the system’s quick and reliable offline transactions for ticketing, toll, and other services. The modular and scalable system architecture allows other services to be integrated at any time.

Managing payment and loyalty-program transactions

Convego System Commerce is a back-end system for managing and operating card-based payment and loyalty-program transactions with a variety of applications that are specifically tailored to the retailer’s requirements. The system provides a wide range of functions and features: Terminal management, card and customer management, warehouse management and distribution, payment domain management, discount and loyalty-program management, processing and accounting management, financial reporting, and a portal for end customers.

Functions and stakeholders of Convego System Commerce

The decisive factor in this innovation is that a single installation is sufficient to serve all stakeholders and to enable them to participate, whether they be the card issuer, retailer, consumer, or distribution partner. The system is:

• Cooperative: All participants have their own roles in the system and have a share in the management, operation, and income generation.
• Product-based: Lifecycle management by the product and product owner enables reliable, rapid, and completely configurable electronic purse payment and loyalty program functions.
• Open: The core system integrates corporate finance, point of sale, terminals, and device production, and can be expanded to include new services.
• Secure: Security is a central component of the system design. Typical features are:
  • End-to-end transaction security
  • Absolute reliability of the database and application server
  • Monitoring and warning functions within the security architecture
  • Token-based operator login

Full service portfolio along the value chain

Convego System Commerce offers a large, central back-end system with 24/7 availability for smartcard issue, e-purse, transactions for electronic payments and loyalty programs, as well as processing, and accounting. The basic components of the product line are: products, system, and service

G&D thus provides a full service portfolio along the value chain, from advice about production, through individualization, to maintenance. However, implementation, integration, and operation of terminals, terminal applications, and other system elements, and hosting of the back-end system are not included in our services. These tasks are either undertaken by the customer themselves or by partner companies.

Convego System Commerce must be localized. With over 150 years of banking expertise behind it, G&D has an excellent understanding of the laws and framework conditions of the financial world. In this sector in particular, we boast a whole range of high quality, successful reference projects. For example, G&D implemented a Convego System Commerce prototype version in one of the world’s largest projects in the retail sector. As part of this, several tens of millions of cards and transactions were supported or processed every day.