RocketPOS leverages Microsoft Azure to empower small retailers

GlobalPay Solutions is a digital-native company that develops mobile technology to help small merchants increase their sales and facilitate day-to-day transactions. 

The Salvadoran company has operations in El Salvador and Panama with more than 4,500 private sellers and more than 200 branches of its corporate customers. It currently processes more than 1 million transactions a month on Azure. 

Technology for people's day-to-day lives 

Four years ago, GlobalPay Solutions decided to revolutionize the sale of mobile phone top ups. The company noted that in developing countries, nine out of ten phones were prepaid and therefore needed to top up balances daily to be connected.  

Until then, small stores could offer refills, but they suffered from airtime shortages. In this context, "I Sell Top Ups" came about. It's an application that allowed small stores to access different data such as histories and generic balances to anticipate demand and increase their sales. "With 'I Sell Top Ups' we found that small stores were already primed to adopt technology in their business," says Federico Barillas Pacas, CEO of GlobalPay Solutions. 

"We began to look at the different needs of the segment and thus Rocket emerged, an application that's 100% focused on stores and small businesses that were not being served by the bank," he adds. 

RocketPOS is a multi-purpose solution that covers the entire ecosystem of daily small store operations. By downloading the app to your mobile phone for free, merchants can accept credit and debit card payments, collect utility payments, connect in a Marketplace with their dealers and vendors, and offer mobile top up sales. 

Microsoft Azure, the cloud platform that leverages RocketPOS 

RocketPOS is hosted entirely on Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform that offers services including servers, storage, databases, networks, software, analytics, and intelligence. "Choosing Azure from the beginning was our best decision. We save money and don't have to worry about outdated servers or outages," Barillas says. 

Global Pay Solutions leverages a variety of solutions to ensure a robust, scalable, transparent and secure solution. "We use Virtual Machines to host everything. We have a network that connects between internal services and databases as external providers," says GlobalPay CEO. "We also have Azure App Services for app and website development and hosting," Barillas adds. 

The company also uses SQL Database, a platform-as-a-service database engine that is responsible for updating, patching, backing up, and monitoring data without user intervention. "This service allows us to place alerts for when the database reaches its maximum capacity and anticipate transactional peaks or peak seasons," Barillas remarks. 

RocketPOS empowers small stores and drives financial inclusion 

Barillas says that "the store that adopts Rocket is going to sell more," and that each of the pillars offers benefits for both small businesses and their customers. While POS and the ability to pay with debit and credit increase sales, paying for services represents more traffic and extra revenue for stores. In this context, end consumers are not forced to go to a teller and can solve their different needs in one place. 

However, the B2B Market Pillar enables digitization of orders and offers a significant advantage in handling information. With Rocket, the store receives greater data to ensure sourcing and segment promotions. 

Additionally, from the technology adoption and creation of Azure-based solutions, the company has partnered with large global brands in the financial sector to drive inclusion, offering merchants a card where they can receive payments from customers. 

Infinite growth possibilities

GlobalPay Solutions is already working to add more and more distributors and suppliers to the marketplace while developing new features that will be added to RocketPOS in the future: insurance, remittances, and microcredits. 

"Our goal is to be one step ahead. We want to have the technology for when the market requires it. The possibilities are endless," says Federico Barillas, CEO of GlobalPay Solutions.