Stratus strengthens reach in five African countries by signing reseller agreement with TPS. (May 2010)

Stratus Technologies has announced the signing of a new reseller partnership with Transaction Payment Solutions International, which will see the companies collaborating to bring Stratus’ leading breed of continuous availability solutions to a host of new customers across the African continent over the coming months.

“This partnership has been on the cards for some time now,” says Dick Sharod, regional director for Africa and Middle East at Stratus Technologies. He noted that TPS has been a strong advocate, providing Stratus ftServer solutions to its customers via partnerships with existing geographic resellers of Stratus for some years now.”

With Stratus looking at additional measures to strengthen its reach into Africa and TPS looking to build a stronger value proposition around continuous availability, when an opportunity to formalise a partnership presented itself a couple of months ago, both parties jumped at the opportunity.

Sharod says that Stratus new partnership with TPS allows it to continue driving its expansion into the African market and to do so with a focused partner that has an integrated approach to the financial services market.

“TPS’ core-business is focused on providing payment solutions to large companies in the banking POS and ATM arena, and with offices in Mauritius, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe the company has already established a healthy trade history in the market segment we understand well.” Sharod says.

“Add to this the fact that official partner status gives TPS a direct conduit to Stratus’ technical teams, sales support, training and the accreditation required to render services around the Stratus brand and it is clear that both parties are benefiting heavily from this new arrangement,” he says.

Ophias Sherewa, managing director of TPS says his company is delighted with its new partnership and has full faith that it will assist Stratus in building greater awareness and traction to their brand in the African market.

“Since the bulk of our customer base is in the financial services market, there is little tolerance for downtime and instability,” Sherewa says.

“We’re passionate about the Stratus infrastructure because it builds a solid, failsafe platform on which we can deliver our software and services portfolio – and most importantly focus on delivering what our customers need in terms of functionality and performance and guaranteeing the level of uptime we’re required to provide.

“Stratus Technologies is a respected name in the business and that’s the reason we believe this new partnership will grow from strength to strength over the coming months,” he concludes.

TPS gives away exciting prizes in the Electronic Airtime Top Up Promotion – Zimbabwe, on the 16th of April 2010 (May 2010)

TPS is a major distributor of electronic airtime at point of sale in many outlets in Zimbabwe including supermarkets, banks and service stations among others. In a drive to promote more electronic airtime usage, the company ran a campaign encouraging customers to buy electronic airtime over a period of 3 months with the attraction of 10 prizes of USD$1 000 each plus the grand prize of an Opel Corsa pick up truck. All customers buying electronic airtime were eligible to enter the promotion, with the promotion pay off line being It’s so easy the Paybay way!

The car was won by Mr James Mwareka whose winning coupon was for airtime worth USD$2. Mr Mwareka noted that he had invested a lot of money into airtime during the promotion – this was in line with our key messages during the promotion – the more you enter the better your chances of winning!! 

TPS will be working on more exciting initiatives to promote our full product range under the PayBay brand.

TPS at ZITF 2010 (April 2010)

TPS was part of the vibrant activity at the Zimbabwe International trade fair (ZITF) 2010. The fair traditionally attracts a diversity of international exhibitors and as the Zimbabwean economy continues to recover TPS took advantage of the opportunity to showcase our range of products and services as we continue to develop and build on our portfolio taking advantage of technological developments.

More information on ZITF is available on their website: zitf.net

TPS Zimbabwe hosts Breakfast Meeting for Zimbabwe Bank MDs’, CEOs’ and Heads of IT. (Dec 2009)

TPS Zimbabwe together with some of their technology associates: Stratus, represented in the region by their strategic partner, who are also a TPS strategic partner Cornastone from South Africa, Ingenico from France and S1 Corporation (who have recently consolidated their Postilion brand under S1 Corporation – S1 is listed on the Nasdaq in the USA) were also present at the event, represented by their team from South Africa. In total 40 guests attended the event including members from the media.

TPS highlighted that their technology partners make a difference to their business. The focus of the meeting was to gather business leaders – to share knowledge and insights on technology developments from world class players in the technology sector to bring focus to 2010 initiatives and beyond, as well as to play a part in influencing business decisions. The underlying debate was that Knowledge is power – though this was short meeting – it was geared to share knowledge and generate discussion.

Cornastone made a presentation on: An overview of high availability solutions aligned to the business critical uptime requirements in Financial and Retail Services. This was of interest highlighting to customers the potential losses that often go uncalculated and unaccounted for.

S1 Corporation s’ (www.S1.com) presentation topic was: Ensuring continuous availability through Active / Active. This presentation generated a lot of interest touching an area focusing on delighting customers through continuous availability.

Ingenico (www.ingenico.com)  shared with customers insights on: Delivering world class payment solutions. The focus was on demonstrating the diversity of payment options for customers as well as exploring the scope of new markets including Microfinance. The meeting was noted to have been thought provoking by the participants