OREANDA-NEWS. Eckoh plc (AIM:ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, today announces that Eckoh's US subsidiary has secured a new five year contract to provide secure payment services to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta ("CHOA"), one of the largest pediatric clinical care providers in the US.

The contract will see Eckoh provide CHOA with Eckoh's market-leading CallGuard solution, from the Haloh Secure Payments Suite. This particular variation of CallGuard uses Eckoh's recently UK patented (US patent pending) tokenisation technology, which was launched to the market in May 2015.

The solution will eliminate any card data from entering any aspect of the hospital's infrastructure to ensure compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS"), and crucially it will not require changes to its existing IT applications, payment vendors or existing relationships, keeping disruption and implementation costs to a minimum.

CallGuard also eradicates the potential for card data theft, prevents employees from being exposed to card data and completely removes payments systems and processes from the audit scope of PCI DSS.

CHOA is one of the largest pediatric health care providers in the US, comprised of three hospitals and 27 neighborhood locations. Their call centre manages over eight million calls per year and implementing CallGuard within its environment will enable payments to be taken completely securely, meeting all the necessary requirements set by the industry.

The increasingly national US presence of Eckoh Inc., enhanced by the acquisition of PSS Help in November 2015, has played an important role in securing this sizeable contract and will support the installation over the coming period. The contract also incorporates the gateway solution developed by PSS Help, which seamlessly merges existing infrastructure to enable a swift and cost-effective installation.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented:

"We are delighted to announce the fourth customer within the last nine months to sign up for our most recently patented solution and our first to utilise the on-the-ground presence of our enlarged team following the PSS Help acquisition last November.

Unlike other secure payments systems this method uses tokenisation to completely remove the need for merchants to make expensive or extensive changes to any existing IT infrastructure. The solution was developed for all card-not-present payments, not just those made over the phone, and its ease of implementation has attracted significant interest from a variety of market sectors.

As regulations and laws tighten around the transmission of personal customer data, we anticipate a growing international demand for our Haloh services."

About Eckoh plc

Eckoh is a global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, supporting an international client base from its offices in the UK, US and Australia.  

Our Haloh Suite of secure payments products, which can be hosted in the Cloud or deployed on the client's site, removes sensitive personal and payment data from contact centres and IT environments. The products offer merchants a simple and effective way to reduce the risk of fraud, secure sensitive data and become compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS") and wider data security regulations. Eckoh has been a PCI DSS Level One accredited Service Provider since 2010, processing over $1 billion in card payments annually. 

Eckoh's customer contact solutions enable enquiries and transactions to be performed on whatever device the customer chooses, allowing organisations to increase efficiency, lower operational costs and provide a true omni-channel experience. We also assist organisations in transforming the way that they engage with their customers by providing support and transition services as they implement our innovative customer contact solutions.

Our large portfolio of clients come from a broad range of vertical markets and includes government departments, telecoms providers, retailers, utility providers and financial services organisations.