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Statoil Chooses Hypercom Card Payment Terminals for its Forecourts

11 May 2000

Statoil Chooses Hypercom Card Payment Terminals for its Forecourts; Hypercom Brings Advanced Technology to the Forecourt

    PHOENIX and WOKING, Sweden--May 11, 2000--(Hypercom Corporation) --Statoil Detaljhandel Skandinavia, a major Scandinavian oil company, will deploy Hypercom Financial Terminals AB (HFT) card payment terminals to support bank and fuel card transaction processing at its petroleum stations throughout Sweden. The number of terminals now ordered is 900. Statoil AB operates approximately 600 retail outlets in that country, and maintains a 25.5% market share. The company's forecourt (petrol station) network includes sites acquired from Svenske Esso and from the acquisition of BP's Swedish forecourt operations.
    "Consumers prefer to pay for fuel purchases by plastic card now," notes Bjorn Eriksson, project leader, Forecourt Automation Systems for Statoil Detaljhandel Skandinavia, "Many types of cards are used, and card reading equipment must support all bank issued credit and debit cards as well as the fuel and petrol cards issued by us and other major oil companies and international fleet card operators cards such as Routex."
    "Hypercom's HFT 117 terminal reads all types of payment cards, allows the secure input of personal identifications numbers (PINs) and is extremely easy to use. Additionally this Hypercom terminal model provides us with a platform for future acceptance of chip-based Credit, Debit and Electronic Purse cards," Mr. Eriksson said.
    Security is of paramount concern in Scandinavia, comments Jairo E. Gonzalez, senior executive officer, Hypercom(R). "The banks insist on the highest levels of security for payment card systems. Hypercom's HFT 117 model, developed in our new Swedish Research and Development facility that specializes in high security and smart card solutions, addresses these concerns. HFT 117 provides both strong logical and physical protection for PIN handling at the point of sale, and during transmission, to a standard that exceeds the banks' requirements. What's more with a small footprint it takes up very little valuable counter space."
    Hypercom's HFT 117 device is a combined POS terminal and PIN Pad, designed for cardholder operation, and addresses the consumer's increasing desire to control handling of their payment card. The HFT 117 connects to the in-store retail cash register system, allowing transaction amount details to be sent automatically across to the payment terminal and eliminating dual keying of details. Communications to the processor, for transaction authorizations, are handled by the in-store system. Customers can enter their PIN numbers to verify transactions in the highly secure environment demanded by the Swedish banking authorities.