Payment Network- Large Scale Retail
Shoemart - netAccess W1000 Transaction Concentrator Implementation
About Shoemart (SM)
From its humble beginnings as a shoe store established by founder Henry Sy Snr in 1958, Philippines’ Shoemart Corporation (SM) has grown to encompass the largest retail chain departmental stores in the country, accounting for more than 65% of the Philippine retail market. In 2006, SM opened the largest department store in Asia - SM Mall of Asia.
Website
www. sm-shoemart.com
Key Challenges
SM called on GHL Systems to provide an updated payment infrastructure - one that is robust, highly available, scalable and adaptable to their specific requirements. GHL Systems deployed a payment network based on the netAccess W1000 series of Network Access Controllers (NACs) that could cater for redundant links, high-availability load balanced controllers and links to their various acquiring banks.
Key Benefits
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Supports PSTN and wireless/GSM-based EDC terminals |
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Native Switching NAC & Native support for Ethernet TCP/IP |
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Acts as firewall in TCP/IP networks, and as a TCP/IP connection concentrator (over 400 TCP/IP client sessions supported) |
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Clustering capability for high availability & fault tolerant failover |
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Customizable for special or customized protocols |
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Supports the IPSec protocol, which implements highly secure communication links between netAccess nodes and also provides secure encrypted channels over a shared and un-trusted TCP/IP network |
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Fast roll-out and implementation |
The Solution
The solution called for two data centres that were geographically distant. SM had two data centres located in Roxas and Makati which are about 15 km apart. These data centres became the central communications hubs. The data centres are linked redundantly by two high-speed leased lines - provided by two separate telecommunications providers. In each of the data centres are five netAccess W1000 NACs to handle the routing of transactions to the banks.
The system is configured to share the load evenly between the two data centres. In addition to being load balanced, the system is also highly redundant with links to their banks duplicated on each site. In the event that one of the data centres is incapacitated, the SM payment infrastructure will be able to handle the full load of the entire organization.
Availability & Scalability
With the netAccess W1000 the expanded and enhanced system was able to cater for acceptance of 13 different types of cards. The system handles credit and debit payments, loyalty point collection, even the in-house SM Gift Cards with prepaid value of Ps500. Today, the system handles over 30 types of transactions with the option to add more over time. System scalability is achieved by merely adding more W1000 units to cater for the additional loads.
The system is constantly monitored constantly using the netAccess System Monitor - a tool for monitoring the general health and loads on each server in a graphical user interface. The GUI is simple and
color-coded, showing at one glance the state of the entire network.
Considering the scope and the functionality of the system, the project took a mere three weeks from design to configuration and implementation. The project was greatly aided by the fact that the leased lines were quickly available for implementation.
The Outcome
The success of the project was immediately confirmed during the Christmas season of 2005. GHL Systems’ consultants and engineers were on standby in Manila during the festive season. However, the systems and network performed smoothly and without a glitch - and continues to do so until today.
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