Women’s Hockey World Cup
10th October 2018

Optomany, a leader in innovative payment processing technology, is celebrating another win after its payment solutions were used to support a major pop-up retail operation during the 2018 Women’s Hockey World Cup.

Optomany, a leader in innovative payment processing technology, is celebrating another win after its payment solutions were used to support a major pop-up retail operation during the 2018 Women’s Hockey World Cup.

The tournament, held in London’s Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, saw 16 teams compete and 120,000 tickets sold for the two-week event.

Granted retail rights for the event, Adidas distributor Specialist Sports set about finding the right partners to help it sell to fans visiting the ground, part of the part of the legacy from the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

Retail and Sports Systems (RS&S) and partner Optomany were a natural choice, having teamed up many times before to deliver robust payment solutions to many leading football and rugby clubs.

R&SS and Optomany systems integrate seamlessly to provide a tried-and-tested, PCI-compliant payments platform that has the resilience to cope with the rush of customers on match days where long queues can sometimes lead to missed sales.

Optomany provided four axept® S300 card machines at Specialist Sports’ temporary 200 metre squared pop-up store, alongside terminals at two other kiosks on the edge of the park. These slotted neatly into the comprehensive EPOS system provided by RS&S via Optomany’s powerful integration API.

The S300 offers superb performance and a highly intuitive user interface to drive a seamless check-out experience for customers. It features multiple connectivity options, supports all major payment types including contactless and mobile, and offers comprehensive reporting.

It also leads the way on data security as the first solution globally to be certified with P2PE version 2: a PCI encryption standard which can significantly reduce compliance overheads.

Specialist Sports director, Richard Mantell, was impressed with the usability of the Optomany hardware: even staff with non-retail experience were able to get up and running with the terminals from day one.

“We’d done retail environments before but not as big as this one. This was the largest hockey event since the 2012 Olympics so everything had to run smoothly,” he said.

“Because it was that much bigger, we needed a good till system in order to process payments seamlessly, but also one which could integrate with stock monitoring systems, as well as record customer requirements for printing on their replica team shirts. We’re delighted with the way it all worked together.”


“We are delighted to have assisted Specialist Sports with their highly successful event alongside our great partner RS&S”, said Ian Rutland, Chief Operating Officer at Optomany. “ Obviously the security and integrity of payment solutions are paramount but their usability, both by customers and staff, is also vital. This event once again demonstrated that the Optomany and RS&S partnership delivers a highly intuitive proposition that is ideally suited to high throughput environments such as sporting venue retail outlets.'

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