PCI Pal’s solution has been named the payment security solution of choice for European restaurant group Fridays UK, the company said in a recent release.
Based in North Carolina, PC Pal has been chosen to provide a fully compliant phone-based card payment system for customers of Fridays UK. Friday's first-ever mobile based card payment system, the measure is expected to be easier on the staff as well.
“At Fridays UK we are very strict on security protocols and therefore PCI Pal had to go through onboarding on our side, which they passed with flying colors,” Fridays UK Chief Technology Officer Erica Livermore said in the release.
PCI Pal, a cloud-based secure payment solutions provider, also has modified its traditional operational model, adding more booking-led "Click & Collect" and delivery features, as well as a Fridays at Home range, the release said.
“We are payment card industry (PCI)-certified and go through our accreditations every year. Implementation was very quick and we were able to roll-out to our virtual contact center team seamlessly,” Livermore said. “The fact this could be completed remotely, due to the cloud-based nature of the solution, was an added advantage given the various lockdowns we were all facing due to the pandemic. It’s been a really good experience.”
With its new technology, PCI Pal Agent Assist solutions enables contact center agents to gather payment information securely on live calls using Dual Tone Multi Frequency masking technology while still engaging in conversation with the customer. The technology eliminates the need to add the organization’s environment in scope of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a press release said.
“Prior to the pandemic, our business had begun moving away from just providing a dine-in service, and instead we started to offer a greater number of booking-based services,” Livermore said. “As a result, we created a virtual contact center to support our 85 UK stores, to help reduce administrative burdens on staff in our stores so they can instead focus on the guest experience.”
The company has also established a new virtual contact center to guide customers and staff through the booking experience, which extended its PCI compliance requirements.
“A large part of this was to channel bookings from the website to the contact center,” Livermore said in the release. “Here, colleagues handle bookings for individual customers and businesses, and the virtual team has the ability to take payments over the phone. Of course, by enabling this, there is the requirement to extend our PCI compliance to telephone-based payments, and so we needed to ensure our solution supported this need, while also ensuring our team could remain in verbal contact with customers.”
Specializing in cocktails and American-inspired foods like steaks, burgers and ribs, Fridays, formerly TGI Fridays, now operates 900 restaurants across 60 countries. Its 85 European locations, scattered across England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, welcome more than 12 million guests per year, the release said.