For almost 60 years, we have been developing and producing outdoor payment terminals – and yet we are changing this part of our company’s history because we have to think further about virtualization and diversification! The new CiRRUS Business Solution reinvents the “POS system”, online and in real time.

It is therefore obvious that your smartphone can be a better self-service terminal! But being disruptive does not necessarily mean to deny your roots: there are still geographical regions today that prefer a real outdoor payment terminal as a real device, possibly also as an addition to mobile applications because your customer simply like it or habit wins over innovation!

Self-service terminals can have different designs – simple card readers in the fuel pump (southern and western Europe and the USA), as a freestanding “terminal” on your forecourt (Scandinavia), or even as a banknote reader, which is particularly popular in Switzerland and Italy. In many countries, fuel terminals increase the ease of use at fuel stations with convenience stores, and even fully automated fuel stations remain highly popular.

October 6, 2020 will undoubtedly go down in history – at exactly 10:53 am (CET) the first-ever self-service terminal was outsourced into the cloud in Umiken, Switzerland! The machine, which still looks like just any other outdoor payment terminal on the forecourt, is in fact no more than a website (for self-service terminals with a touchscreen as a user interface) and an accumulation of entirely unintelligent hardware components!

The actual software application and all processes are made available in real-time through two georedundant computer centres. All that “bleeps” actually takes place somewhere else in this world! In principle, this works like a mobile payment application in physical housing – a technical revolution adapted to meet your customers’ requirements who are simply used to a real self-service terminal. In Umiken, Switzerland, the components of the !!! 18 years !!! old outdoor payment terminal was made suitable for the internet using an IoT service player without having to replace any components! Mundane parts such as buttons, displays, printers, contacts, sensors, heating, fan, card and banknote readers are addressed directly from the related CiRRUS instance and made available for the cloud application. What’s the point, you may ask?

Simple – state-of-the-art technology, adjusted for your customers’ usability requirements! Low investments, long investment protection and simple maintenance: no local databases, no local problems, no local updates! The self-service terminal is always up to date, just like its CiRRUS instance – welcome to the future!