High-Speed Transactions for an On-Demand World

When I was shopping last week, I noticed a significant difference between the checkout times of Walgreens and Safeway. Both were quick to scan and bag my items, but Walgreens was able to process my chip-based credit card in a second, if not less. I pushed my card inside the reader, and immediately heard a beep. At Safeway, validating my card took about 10 seconds. Though 10 seconds doesn’t seem all that long, imagine if you were waiting in line behind eight people, all paying with credit card– just the payment processing alone would add about 80 seconds to your wait time!

For retail stores, improving operational efficiency is crucial to their success. A recent article published in the Harvard Business Review validates this claim.  The article quotes a study that  examined the financial data of 37 U.S. retailers, and found that those who focused on operational improvements were the most successful. Kroger, for example, implemented hi-tech solutions that helped them reduce the average customer wait time in the checkout line from four minutes to 26 seconds. Kroger cites this as one of the main factors that contributed to its 50 successive quarters of revenue growth.

Real-time, high-speed transactions have become a necessity for most businesses in this on-demand era. When we go down to the database level, the term “transaction” can refer to any system of record (not just financial in nature) where the data or activity is recorded permanently. High-speed transactions are in demand in many industry verticals. Here are a few areas  that require high-speed transactions in specific industries:

Retail: Payment processing, inventory management, sourcing

Financial: Trading, cash transfers, disbursement, claim management

E-Commerce: Order processing and fulfillment, payment processing

Entertainment: Entitlement, digital asset management

Transportation: Inventory management, dispatch

Travel and leisure: Reservations, inventory management, payment processing

Many Redis customers leverage the Redis^e Platform to power high-speed transactions for their applications. To meet the growing demand for more information about managing high-speed transactions in Redis^e, the Redis team has published a technical white paper on the topic, available here: /docs/managing-transactions-redis/.