APAC Issue 7 2018

APAC / Issue 7 2018 5 NEWS , Adoption of digital payment solutions is likely to rise fur- ther in Asia-Pacific, says GlobalData. With safety, trust and conveni- ence emerging as important fac- tors, the adoption of digital wallets and contactless card-based pay- ments by retailers in developing countries across Asia-Pacific is likely to rise further and become a standard, says leading data and analytics company GlobalData. Traditionally, smaller retailers, street traders, corner cafes and cabbies relied on the cash econ- omy for decades and could not afford to buy card reader devices or pay the fees associated with processing electronic payments. However, things have started to change rapidly over the past few years, most noticeably in India. Andreas Olah, Lead Analyst for Digital Retail at GlobalData, says: “As the Indian government launched a demonetisation pro- gram, consumers were forced to use electronic payments, though cash did not completely disap- pear. As a result, all types of re- tailers understood the need to offer cashless payment methods to remain competitive.” Paytm emerged as a popular dig- ital wallet in India with over 200 million users. It can be used for payments across all major stores, online retailers, utility bills, and metro cards, as well as auto rick- shaws and food stalls. The wal- let’s balance can be topped up via credit or debit cards, as well as through online bank transfers. It can also be integrated with most point of sales (PoS) solutions. The trend towards cashless payments is not limited to India; however other countries use dif- ferent approaches. For example, in China, many consumers prefer to use the all-round app WeChat for payments. It offers in-app and web based payments, as well as options for splitting bills and pay- ing friends and family members without any hassle. In Europe, Swedish mobile pay- ments company iZettle offers a mobile card reader which is a popular choice among sever- al smaller retailers, cafes and restaurants. Unlike Paytm and WeChat, it is primarily aimed at contactless debit and credit card payments, although it also offers traditional chip and PIN. iZettle also offers an e-commerce plat- form that small retailers can set up with minimal effort. Olah concludes: “Safety and trust are important factors for the in- creased adoption of cashless payment solutions in addition to greater convenience including the speed of the transaction. They feature advanced encryption technology, and secret keys used in payment transactions do not re- veal any passwords or other sen- sitive information such as credit card numbers. “Retailers are recognising the need to accept the payment types that customers prefer if they do not want to lose out on busi- ness. Adoption rates are likely to rise for digital wallets, as well as for contactless card-based pay- ments as they are becoming the standard in many countries. The biggest disruption is occurring in developing countries across Asia, Latin America, and Africa where digital wallets are also opening up banking services to millions of low-income consumers who have previously relied entirely on cash and checks.” Adoption of Digital Payment Solutions is Likely to Rise Acquisition of Sym- ply Inc., assets allow Global Distribution to provide industry leading 4K and 8K ready collaborative storage solu- tions featuring StorNext®6 to a wider base of media creators and video production facilities. Global Distribution, recently an- nounced the acquisition of assets of Symply, Inc., a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance storage solutions for collaborative workflows. Symply products offer a unique blend of enterprise-class five nines reliability storage and indus- try-leading StorNext® file system, which support clients running on Li- nux, Mac, and Windows platforms. Symply delivers a wide range of easy-to-use storage solutions that support connectivity over Fibre Channel, Ethernet, and Thunderbolt. All Symply products are optimised for rich media applications, collabo- rative teams, AI use, cloud connec- tivity, HDR, high-frame-rate, 4K and higher resolution projects. “Our acquisition of Symply Inc., combines the innovative custom- er-centric solutions developed by the Symply team with our longevity and presence as a specialist distrib- utor in the media and entertainment industry,” said Keith Warburton, CEO at Global Distribution. “We’ve always worked very closely with our vendors but acquiring Symply opens up really exciting new possibilities for us to expand upon Symply’s SAN, NAS and storage product lines and develop comprehensive solutions for media workflows through unri- valed interoperable technologies.” Global’s acquisition of Symply fur- thers their partnership with Quan- tum (NYSE: QTM) to deliver mar- ket leading solutions based on the next-generation StorNext® 6 stor- age management platform that is embedded within a wide-range of Symply products. “We are excited to partner with Glob- al to bring StorNext® 6 to a far wider base of creative professionals,” said Jamie Lerner, CEO and President of Quantum, “The unique approach of the SymplyULTRA, and Global’s vi- sion for innovative Apple compatible Thunderbolt solutions are a perfect match with StorNext high-perfor- mance file sharing capabilities.” The Symply sales, engineering and support teams remain in place, en- suring all Symply customers con- tinue to enjoy the products, knowl- edgeable staff, and world-class support they have come to rely on. “We are very pleased to see Sym- ply evolving by joining industry leader Global Distribution. We rely on Symply in our post-production workflow to deliver the performance and reliability we need,” said Mi- chael Rogalewski, Director of IT at Big Breakfast Productions. “As the premier producer of scripted and unscripted comedic television, our team depends on Symply to support us in meeting our tight deadlines.” “We are very excited to hear that Symply is becoming part of Glob- al Distribution and look forward to seeing what they can do with the resources of a bigger company,” said Andres Lapi, CTO at Tele- doce. “We’ve been using Symply with great success at our facilities in Montevideo, Uruguay for about a year. When it came time to choose a workflow for operations at the In- ternational Broadcast Centre of the World Cup in Moscow, Russia, we chose Symply again. We installed a control room and all the storage operations run through Symply. We’ve got editors working on the media, journalists checking mate- rial and technicians organising the huge amounts of hours of video being generated at the World Cup. Everything is running smoothly with Symply, and hope our National team joins our success on the field.” “Global Distribution has built a strong following and is considered to be the distributor of choice for Value Added Resellers that focus on system inte- gration, studio and workflow design. In recent years Global has aggres- sively expanded to reach markets around the world including the Los Angeles film, television and advertis- ing communities. The acquisition of Symply Inc. will allow Global to offer specific solutions to requirements that are unique to the M&E com- munity. With offices in Culver City, Global is strategically located to help our resellers support and service the needs of media companies in Bur- bank, Culver City, and Hollywood,” said Jonathan Ellihou COO Global Distribution NA.