Initial situation

As one of the leading textile retailer's in the region, Henschel & Ropertz GmbH operates fashion stores rich in tradition at their headquarters Darmstadt and at Michelstadt. Modehaus Kraus in Heidelberg also puts the successful concept of Henschel & Ropertz into practice: A wide variety and sophisticated range is topped off by high quality consulting and the precisely co-ordinated provision of service.

It goes without saying, that all standard credit and EC cards have been accepted at all cash desks of the enterprise for many years. The latter are exclusively transacted in the EC cash process with PIN. Due to the new demands made on transaction systems such as the international standard EMV, Henschel & Ropertz decided to modernise its transaction solution by replacing the existing terminals for new devices of REA Card.

Thereby particularly the data transmission via numerous ISDN connections was to be replaced by a modern solution on the basis of Ethernet and the TCP/IP protocol –to minimise current costs and to utilise the existing LAN network.

Implementation

REA Card supplied Henschel & Ropertz a package solution, which includes the EC terminal of the type REA ECS-HS and which provides the all-round service to conclude EC cash as well as credit card transactions incl. network operation, depot maintenance and a hotline service.

The terminals were integrated in the existing local Ethernet network in all the departments stores. The transaction data thus first arrives at the headquarters in Darmstadt from the branch networks. From there they are forwarded via a VPN tunnel set up by REA to the authorization computer. As the already existing DSL connection of Henschel & Ropertz is used, all the telephone charges for authorisation via diverse ISDN connections are saved.

Due to the encryption of the data transmitted by TCP/IP the VPN tunnel assurance is provided that the transmission of the transactions to the network operator is safe. Furthermore, it makes a safe connection of the terminal to the remote maintenance system of REA Card possible which carries out the fully automatic download and the installation of updates. .