Argus is live with Bermuda’s most sophisticated Card Present platform
Hamilton, Bermuda – January 30, 2020. The Argus Group (“Argus”), a multi-line insurance and financial services organisation is live with Powertranz, a sophisticated Bermuda-based Card Present platform with EMV and card swipe functionality that currently supports Chip and PIN, Chip and Signature, and Magnetic Stripe read capabilities with all banks in Bermuda as well as in 17 Caribbean countries.
The fully equipped payment platform features PCI Validated P2PE, the PCI Council’s standard for End-to-End encryption, via the Powertranz partnership with Bluefin, a leading provider of secure payment technologies.
Argus offers a full range of insurance, pensions and investment products targeted at local and international organisations and individuals.
Argus accepts credit and debit card payments both online (via First Atlantic Commerce, sister company to Powertranz) and offline. The Powertranz solution facilitates all Argus Point of Sale (POS) transactions for all lines of business. This means the customer service representatives do not handle the customer’s card. Rather, the customer inputs or swipes their card into the payment device themselves.
The solution went live in July 2019 and enables truly integrated POS payments, which reduces Argus’ PCI compliance risk.
According to the Argus Technology Solutions Manager, Sash Selvaratnam, the Powertranz gateway provides a secure and integrated solution to help deliver end-to-end payment processing. Prior to working with Powertranz, although Argus always ensured the secure management of credit card data, they were still physically handling the credit card on behalf of the customer during payment processing.
“We needed to further mitigate our card data risk – by allowing the customer to handle the credit card during the payment process through a secure and integrated solution,” said Mr. Selvaratnam. “Powertranz has allowed us to transfer control of payment processing to our customers. We no longer even touch our customer’s credit card. This, of course, is of great value to our customers as their payment information remains more secure through the payment process.”
PCI validated P2PE encrypts card data at the point of contact with the payment terminal, removing all clear text credit card data from the merchants’ systems. This largely reduces PCI Scope and protects merchants from credit card data breaches.
Ronnie Viera, FAC’s COO said: “We are pleased to have Argus sign on with Powertranz. PCI Validated P2PE protection on every transaction provides the utmost security to both merchants and consumers by substantially decreasing the risk of exposing payment data.”
About Powertranz
Powertranz is a sophisticated Card Present payment platform provider that processes integrated Point of Sale transactions, including EMV and PCI Validated Point to Point Encryption (P2PE), in Bermuda and the Caribbean marketplace. Powertranz is the first provider of PCI Validated P2PE in the Caribbean via its partnership with Bluefin. The company is based in Bermuda, along with its sister company, First Atlantic Commerce. For more information, please visit www.powertranz.bm
About Argus
The Argus Group, or Argus, is the collective name for Argus Group Holdings Limited and its subsidiaries: a multi-line insurance and financial services organisation offering a full range of insurance, pensions and investment products targeted at local and international organisations and individuals and operating in Bermuda, Canada, Gibraltar and Malta. For further information, please visit www.argus.bm.