Offering Aussie businesses a cheaper alternative to global credit card schemes, Australia debit card company eftpos has rolled out its digital payment services for banks and retailers. In its first play in the digital payments realm, eftpos’s new service will allow merchants to process regular card-on-file payments, meaning when a card is saved by the merchant or payment provider.
Australian banks like Suncorp and 40 others have signed up for this new digital payment service already. This means their cards can be processed through the digital payment system of eftpos. Dozens of Aussie businesses, including Clue Learning and Aussie Broadband have begun processing payments through this new service.
This service is the company’s latest step to challenge the transaction routing costs of Visa and Mastercard and arrives at a pivotal time when the lockdown has forced businesses to adapt to online modes of transaction.
Details of the digital payments service by eftpos
The digital payments solution by eftpos will be available for regular payments initially, or “online card-on-file transactions”, where card details of a customer are stored by a business or the payment system provider.
Through this service, both monthly subscriptions (recurring payments initiated by merchants) and payments initiated by the customers will be supported by some banks.
Stephen Benton, CEO of eftpos stresses on how using the digital payments system by eftpos will be a way more modest in terms of pricing as compared to major credit card networks.
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More on the announcement by eftpos
Mr Benton says Eftpos is already synonymous with low-cost debit card payments in-store at retailers across the country and they are excited to enter and lead in the digital space. It is early days but their digital payments service will continuously enable more small and medium businesses to have Australia’s most known cards, multi-network debit cards, processed by them, and hopefully deliver significant cost savings, says Mr Benton. These seemingly less savings are huge for small businesses during the pandemic and recovery according to Mr Benton.
In July 2020, eftpos announced that it would be teaming up with ledger firm Hedera Hashgraph to develop a proof-of-concept for micropayments in an aspiration to be used as an alternative payment to paywalls or monthly subscriptions. Additionally, the company announced its partnership with Auspost for the trial of its new digital identity solutions, connectID, a platform designed to protect people from fraud and identity theft.
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Image Courtesy: Eftpos, Wikipedia
