STUDY: Activity provider adopts MPoS
By Retail Technology | Thursday February 20 2014
Glencoe Activities is benefitting from new mobile payment technology that allows it to offer customers a more flexible and convenient way to pay
Glencoe Activities is an outdoor activity provider, located in Glencoe Valley, Scotland. It offers a range of high adrenaline activities including, mountain biking, Segway tours, archery and white water rafting.
Many of the activities provided by Glencoe are very much on-the-go, taking place in various locations across the Scottish Highlands. The mobile nature of the business, combined with the highly seasonal nature of outdoor activities meant that Glencoe needed a flexible and cost effective way to accept payments from its customers.
Maximising customer convenience
Laurence Young, director at Glencoe Activities, commented: “Before using SumUp, accepting payment from our customers was often clunky and messy. We either had to request cash only, or ask the business ‘next door’ if we could use their card terminals – not always convenient!”
Glencoe Activities decided that using mobile point-of-sale (MPoS) technology would provide an ideal way to accept card payments. The activity provider management team had noticed other businesses using SumUp and heard positive things, so decided to see for themselves what the service was like.
The team at Glencoe are now able to accept card payments in the open air using their smartphones or tablet devices. This eliminates the inconvenience of either having to accept only cash, or having to borrow a neighbouring business’s card acceptance terminal.
SumUp allows the Glencoe team to accept credit and debit cards, in a simple, secure and cost-effective way, charging a fee of only 1.95% per card transaction. SumUp is authorised as a Payment Institution by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and is Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMVCo) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) certified, ensuring that payments are processed in accordance with the highest security standards.
Management efficiencies and growth
Since using SumUp, Glencoe Activities has found that as a business it has become a lot more efficient in processing payments, enabling it to successfully achieve 25% growth in revenues in 2013.
Young explained: “Using SumUp means we can move away from being a cash business and get better security and control on our revenues. With SumUp we were able to take more revenues without increasing staffing.”
The new system has also enabled Glencoe Activities to improve its offering to customers, where they often want to pay by card. Therefore accepting card payments meets with customer expectations.
Young concluded: “SumUp is simple, straightforward and very effective. It gives a low-cost, flexible method of taking card payments that does away with the bureaucracy and hassle of more traditional payment solutions. SumUp simply works.”
