After several months of development, SparkBase successfully moved 100% of the dial-up traffic to its next-generation gateway this morning. This new gateway improves speed and reliability for merchants still processing dial-up transactions. Scalability was also improved with the ability to translate several other message formats on the fly.

“This new gateway is seriously revolutionary. We were able to shave 2-4 seconds off of our normal transaction time, and improve reliability over older phone lines.” Said SparkBase CEO Douglas Hardman. “We’re seeing a lot of people move to IP, but there is a substantial contingent of merchants still on older dial-up terminals. With the ability to migrate merchants off of other networks, while maintaining support for our own library, SparkBase is an even easier decision for ISOs of all sizes. We also continue to be 100% backwards compatible to all of our supported terminals. The only thing that merchants should notice is faster transaction times while the customer is waiting.”

With this transition completed, SparkBase will also begin rolling out a new reporting structure that will be fluidly compatible with several CRM packages like SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and open source applications like SugarCRM. This will enable SparkBase ISOs to manage their customer base through their own existing applications, without using any of the provided SparkBase tools.

The way the industry is shifting, you have to be compatible with a lot of things,” said Hardman. “We have a very robust set of tools, but there are some clients that have invested substantially in their own software. This just makes it easier for them to manage their merchants with minimal modifications to their own software.”

The gateway transition occurred at 4:00am EST on June 28th. The integration and reporting updates are expected in the coming months.

About SparkBase:
SparkBase LLC. is a leading Stored Value datacenter for the processing of of ISO Private Label gift and loyalty card transactions to the merchant services community. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, SparkBase processes millions of transactions annually, all behind the scenes of its customers. This offers a competitive advantage to the MLS and ISO market that may not be able to afford the costs associated with a datacenter of their own. Serving merchants nationwide, as well as 4 countries, SparkBase is positioned to be the growing standard for ASP modeled transaction reporting. SparkBase has grown by more than 150% annually since processing its first transaction in October of 2004. For more information, visit SparkBase.com

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under SparkBase News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.