WHAT is required?

• Following the recent Freedompay platform issue on September 18, SpotOn is required to update your Point-of-Sale applications.

• We strongly recommend that all SpotOn / Freedompay clients plan for rollout of a POS update, to obtain best benefit from all resiliency features, and to comply with this Freedompay EOL announcement.

WHY is the upgrade required?

• Freedompay identified an underlying bug which was triggered during this incident, and has published several critical stability improvements and bugfixes as a hotfix for their Android payments middleware, which is used by SpotOn POS applications.

• Freedompay notified all clients that any version of their Android middleware prior to this patch will be End-of- Life, as of October 10. As a result, SpotOn is incorporating this required update into all future releases which rely on this firmware, for ActivateX, InteractX, and Interact Classic.

WHAT is the impact of this EOL Notice?

• Your POS applications and Freedompay payments will not stop working, as of October 10th.

• However, while SpotOn has enjoyed a long period of stability with this software in market, the underlying potential issue on currently released versions exposes the risk that Freedompay could elect to block traffic if the bug is triggered again, per their EOL notice.

HOW can we comply with this notice?

• Please reach out to your SpotOn Account Executive or Customer Success Manager for coordinating upgrades. 

FAQ's

Will my POS stop working at the EOL date?

• NO, but if your venue experiences a high-volume offline recovery such as a network outage, Freedompay can elect to temporarily block your IP traffic, which may cause disruption to both online payments, and your offline recovery.

Will FP block my payments traffic if we do not upgrade by Oct 10?

• There is a possibility of that. If this bug is triggered again, it could result in a large volume of traffic routed to Freedompay in a short window, which Freedompay has stated in the EOL notice could result in Freedompay electing to block traffic from your IP range.

When can we receive the patched POS?

• SpotOn has core patched versions available now for UAT or deployment. We will not be patching every version, so venues will need to upgrade to the next available patched version.

What changed in the patched POS versions?

• These are hotfix versions of stable POS releases, which have updated ONLY the Freedompay middleware, to address the bugfixes identified by Freedompay as causing performance issues during offline recovery. No other changes are being made to the SpotOn POS software.

• The Freedompay middleware changes are designed to address recovery of offline payments.

Will these changes affect my online payments?

• Freedompay represented that these changes will not interfere with online payments.

Are there any impacts to using the patched POS versions?

• Freedompay has introduced throttling logic to recovery of offline payments. Playback of offline- approved payments will likely take longer than previously seen, particularly with a large number of offline payments.

• Due to this throttling logic, there is now a longer delay between attempts to recover from offline, which will cause normal orders to briefly appear in the Offline queue before they Close and Sync. This is expected behavior – these were previously running through so quickly that this was not visible to the cashier. This may require some staff training for awareness of the change.

Do we have to upgrade all POS devices?

• You should upgrade all SpotOn POS when possible, but venues need to address devices or venues that would see high volume as a priority with a hotfix version.

If my venue is stable now, can we wait for the next regular POS release?

• Not if your venue is currently active. Due to the EOL notice, SpotOn recommends that updates are performed for all active venues. For inactive venues, the updates should be completed before your next customer event.

Are there any changes on the Freedompay hardware?

• No, the update affects freedompay libraries which control that hardware and the recovery of offline payments to the gateway.