GREENSBORO, N.C. & SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Convergence and scale. That is how Gilbarco Veeder-Root and VeriFone Systems hope to transform the forecourt with their new technology, sales and service partnership that promises to bring new levels of secure payment and digital content to the evolving gasoline dispenser at gas stations and convenience stores around the globe.
In an Q&A with CSP Daily News ahead of the partnership's announcement, Dan Yienger, senior vice president of VeriFone, San Jose Calif., and Martin Gafinowitz, president of Gilbarco Veeder-Root, Greensboro, N.C., explained the strategy behind the agreement and how it will work.
Q: What are the basic parameters of the deal?
DY: Verifone and Gilbarco are partnering to bring the next generation of forecourt payment to the [retail petroleum] industry. VeriFone will be co-developing products with Gilbarco that we will be supplying to Gilbarco to be included in their dispensers for payments and media. We will be working cooperatively to develop enhanced technology that will come into the dispenser over the next year and several years.
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Q: How will this partnership manifest itself at the dispenser, and how will it affect motorists and their fueling experiences at the pump?
DY: We will be merging the Gilbarco-owned company Outcast in with VeriFone Media, creating VNET, which Day One will be approximately 26,000 media-enabled screens in the North American market. These screens reach about 80 million customers per month. We're looking forward to using this technology to engage customers with relevant content, whether that is CPG offers in the store or news, weather and information. We're excited about growing this media network and making the extensive experience with secure payment being first, but having the enhanced media offering to engage customers while they are fueling up their vehicles.
MG: As we look to a world where all the devices are getting smarter, it's our mission to ensure that are customers are in a position to take advantage of all these technologies. The combination of VeriFone and Gilbarco in this way is really going to help us realize that mission and bring benefit to our customers, whether it's new ways to pay, whether it's new devices to consumers. There are high levels of security on the payment devices themselves, which is obviously a huge issue with EMV.
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But this is not just about the payment product, but about how we bring digital content to the marketplace.
DY: They [motorists] are going to approach the dispenser and present payment--whether that's a traditional card, an EMV card, mobile, contactless, whatever--they are immediately going to see a large multimedia screen that will be communicating with them via video as well as audio on the fueling process and experience, but also current content. The content will be refreshed very frequently--it will be day-parted for the morning customer versus the evening customer and provide relevant data whether it's weather, community news or special offers inside.
Q: How will the partnership help retailers?
DY: One of the things we believe this will provide to the site owner is the ability to get the motoring consumer from the gasoline pump into the store via relevant offers and information--letting them know what's available to them inside the convenience store or snack shop.
Q: How will the partnership help CPG companies?
DY: It becomes a very large network Day One. As we reach that size, and the number of consumers, I think that the CPG companies will get much more interested in approaching this piece of the business with offers on their current products within the c-stores.
MG: It's a business of significantly more scale, with the potential to grow that scale even more than it would have been had we been two separate companies--and not just the potential for a larger scale, but a more rapid evolution of that scale.
Q: What is the strategy behind the deal itself?
MG: We think this is an exciting announcement, one that's going to be enormously beneficial to the industry. You're taking two leading players--Gilbarco is a leading supplier of forecourt technology with a strong position worldwide in payments, but confined to our vertical--petroleum and convenience. VeriFone is a worldwide leader in payments, and I think the marriage of these two businesses is going to give us the opportunity to create substantial technology advantages that we'll be able to bring to the marketplace.
The world of payment and media is getting significantly more complex. We see cars getting smarter, we see digital devices ruling lives and we see a need for ever-enhancing levels of security across payment transactions--not just traditional payment transactions, but emerging payment methodologies. The opportunity to take companies that are leaders in their specific fields and bring them together we felt enabled us to bring a much more powerful offering to our customers. We've really married a leader in the petroleum vertical with a leader in payment.
This is very much a global deal. There's a lot happening in North America and the U.S. in particular with the impeding EMV implementation, but we do see markets around the world transitioning to bring outdoor payment to gas stations at a very rapid rate.
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