Spectra Technologies may be fairly young but its receipt of a Consumer Product Design award for its S9000i Compact EFTPOS Terminal will surprise no one. EFTPOS terminals automate debit/credit card authorisation leaving shop clerks free to serve customers.

Only three years old, Spectra has 70 staff and has already opened branch offices in China and Taiwan. It has 50% of the market share in Hong Kong for Electronic Draft Capture (EDC) and was the first to introduce a product that could handle both debit and credit cards, winning 90% of the market locally. More than 30 banks in Hong Kong have installed thousands of the Universal Transaction Machines (UTM) for credit card, debit card and loyalty programmes. Four of China's largest banks are using thousands of Spectra's UTMs across China.

How did a young Hong Kong company come to achieve this level of success? Spectra Technologies did its homework. It studied the Hong Kong market and noted its particular requirements focusing on winning over the local market before heading overseas. Since shops here are small, retailers want a compact unit that is attractive as well as handy enough to withstand frequent use.

To meet the demands of English and Chinese retailers and customers, the product had to be multi-lingual. The S9000I can display Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. Low lighting conditions meant that a larger and high resolution LCD screen was required. With a larger screen, Spectra was able to use fewer and bigger keys creating an easy to use device.

One innovation is the use of infrared technology so the hand-held part of the UTM is cordless. Spectra has also designed the S9000i for a variety of environments allowing, for example, a number of hand-held units to share a base for communicating.

Security is always a concern with financial transactions but with many tourists, Hong Kong retailers are even more aware of the risks of fraud. So Spectra built in a security processor as well as a System Authentication Module or SAM card slot for mutual authentication. This lets banks be assured of the identity of both the card holder and the retailer. The high level of security supported by the S9000i means it can meet the new Visa-Master-Europe (VME) standard which will be important for its success overseas.

In fact, Spectra has designed its UTM to support a range of card transaction standards including popular magnetic stripes and state-of-the-art IC card or Smart Card technologies.

Spectra's S9000i is the perfect example of a high technology product born out of Hong Kong's environment but bred to meet the demands of an international market.