Spire Payments Chosen By Sports Direct To Upgrade Their UK-Based Stores With Spire's Latest Fully-Approved Chip And PIN Retail Payment Solution

Spire Payments is proud to announce the supply of 4,000 EMV-approved SPp30 retail PIN Pads to Sports Direct who have over 500 stores situated in 19 countries. This project delivers Spire’s latest state-of-the-art retail payment solution to all Sports Direct UK stores.

As a FTSE100, £2B retailer, Sports Direct’s trading requirements are extremely demanding, with staggering transaction volumes at times of peak trading. The SPp30’s robust design and intuitive user-interface make it ideal for a retail environment. To complete the solution Spire has developed a bespoke payment application (resident on the SPp30), which interfaces with the Sports Direct cash till system and allows the processing of transactions on a  cloud-based payment gateway from TNS. The entire bespoke solution was accredited by Barclays and is now live in several of Sports Directs stores.

Each SPp30 is connected directly to the EPOS system without the need for separate power feeds, thus simplifying installation. All sensitive cardholder data is processed by the SPp30 which is fully approved to PCI PTS 3.x security standards. Fully compliant with PayPass 3.0.x (MasterCard), payWave 2.1.x (Visa) and Expresspay 3.0 (American Express), the SPp30 offers a card-scheme-approved hardware platform for NFC and contactless card payments.

The ability for the SPp30 to continue processing card transactions should external acquirer communication links be unavailable was another key requirement for this project. This allows continued trading during network outages, and also permits new stores to commence trading immediately despite the communication infrastructure not being in place.

Spire Payments have considerable experience in providing payment solutions for major high street retailers. This experience combined with their partnership with TNS (a market-leading global provider of data communications and payment gateway interoperability solutions) ensured an end-to-end solution was delivered to Sports Direct both on budget.

Kazem Aminaee, CEO and President of Spire Payments commented, “Spire Payments is delighted to have been selected by Sports Direct to deploy our latest retail payment solution utilising the SPp30. Working closely with partners has allowed us to deploy a market leading proposition which not only met the demanding requirements set out by Sports Direct, but also meets all the latest security and regulatory requirements.”

Ryan Baillie, Project Manager of Sports Direct “Sports Direct prides itself on delivering industry recognised customer satisfaction, part of which is providing the ability to accept all types of card payment securely and efficiently. The solution being delivered by Spire Payments in partnership with TNS should allow Sports Direct to not only make this strategy reality but also optimise our trading ability by removing the risk of business interruption due to external network issues.”