Dear customers, friends,
it is now three years since we jointly launched a solution on our market that we firmly believe will one day completely dominate the world of payments not only in brick-and-mortar stores - the GP tom application. It's not just a mobile terminal - when we invented the solution, we never planned to stop with just payments. The goal is for you, the entrepreneur, to make the app your helper, assistant and also sometimes a routinizer that will take you away from inefficient work and do it for you. In addition to its routine work such as cash, card or cryptocurrency payments, it takes care of receipts and their storage for you, it can store all the payments you've made, and now it can also manage the items you sell and the orders your customers place in the Plus extension, which you can activate instantly in your account. It also doesn't force you to call to change your receipt header, it doesn't force you to write emails to activate new services - everything is available to you right in the app at the tap of a button.
When we were designing the solution, we looked at what bothers us about other products when we need help. None of us are tired of waiting on a customer service line and listening to a machine voice telling us that we are 12th in line. That's why we've also designed all of our support to be available right in the app, saving you time and hassle. The app itself can also tell our support if something is wrong, so we are able to address everything before any problems register.
Our goal is to help you, start-up merchants and multinational corporations alike, to make payment processing part of your visions and dreams of how you would like to serve your customers - this is where we differ from legacy solutions where you were forced to adapt. For you, for example, who run the entire business yourself and are the owners, salespeople, assistants and accountants, we strive to bring you services that previously only the big players in the market could afford. Then for the large merchants, we are constantly expanding and improving the API interface so you can seamlessly integrate our services and features into your processes. After three years, we have reached the point where we need to take the next big step forward.
Big change
The app is growing every day, we welcome more than a thousand new users every month and the pace is increasing. You can now use GP tom in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Malta and this year's list of countries doesn't end there - we will soon launch the solution in England and Ireland and we would like to add two more countries by the end of the year.
It's a big change and we don't want to compromise on our demands for reliability and quality of service. We want to make sure we can bring you new features as quickly as we did at the beginning. We don't want to let one day the app say enough is enough, that's all I can handle. That's why, in the middle of last year, we started working on a huge change to the background of the app - a completely new layout of systems to help us manage everything. Unfortunately, this past Christmas only reinforced our belief that this was necessary. Although we had prepared for the onslaught, we didn't avoid the outages - it's a failure that has been very frustrating for us, as we really were doing our best. Although the problems were not directly with us, you are our customers and we are accountable to you. We apologize.
The new environment requires us to make a big bang switch to the new systems one evening in early May (which we will specify). It's a daunting task and we feel it necessary to let you know. We trust that you will support us during this transition and I can promise you that we will continue to repay your trust. I firmly believe that the team that manages and develops the application and the entire environment for you on a daily basis, and was actually at the greenfield birth of the application, will be up to the challenge. A good team is always the foundation of a good product.
What you can look forward to
Although we are working on big challenges and expansion, it is our duty to bring you new services and features in the app. In the new version, we're removing the need for a second PIN app - all you need is one app and you're all in one. Sometimes 1 is more than 2. We've also added order and purchase statistics for your customers, and added the ability to send or print a receipt. For businesses where you want to pin protect certain functions for shift managers or owners you have a new pin function protection service. Soon we will allow you to add your logo to the app, it will be possible to control more services and features in the app through API including user management.
A separate chapter will be the loyalty solution, which will once and for all relegate plastic loyalty cards to the dustbin of history. As usual with Global Payments and GP tom - it will be a groundbreaking solution. Even small merchants will be able to afford a loyalty program without the complexity of handling it - something that has never been possible before.
We are also working on new payment methods. We're adding multi-currency support, new transaction types - there's a lot going on and we're not stopping challenging ourselves.
I hope you enjoyed this news. I would like to thank you very much for your support, without you this work would have no sense.
I'll be glad for feedback.
Have a good day!
Radovan & team GP tom