Madrock

Recently I came across a new e-Commerce company called EFT Networks, which seems to have an exciting future in the Global Payments Market.

It looks like they have a good mix of consulting and solution design.

www.eftnetworks.com

Services

Electronic Payment

Designed to enable both credit card and direct debit, EFT Networks electronic payment solutions work effectively across multiple sales channels—including Web, Contact Call Centre, IVR and EFTPOS. Manage your payment processing system in-house or outsource, depending on your business needs.

Global Payments

International commerce requires fully integrated global payment and risk management solutions. Requirements span the gamut of payment acceptance considerations from accepting local payment types, pricing in local currencies and dynamically updating prices with changes in exchange rates (dynamic currency conversion), authorising and settling in multiple currencies, to managing fraud and compliance issues such as tax and export regulations. EFT Networks offers a single interface to the global payment network to handle all of these considerations as your business grows.

ICE - Reporting & Management

The EFT Networks Enterprise Business Center gives you a single, easy-to-use interface for managing and configuring payment processing services.

ICE caters for each area of the payment transaction cycle from authentication, authorisation, settlement, dispute resolution and reconciliation – enabling our clients to reduce transaction costs, eliminate fraud, minimise risk, maximise cash flow and increase profitability.

Integrations

EFT Networks provides flexible and secure payment and risk management integrations in to host and legacy systems as well as industry-leading software.

Using industry standards and protocols, our solutions can be customised to suit your exact business requirements

Products

ICE (Intelligent Communications Exchange)

At the core is our Intelligent Communications Exchange (ICE) which enables all known transaction enablers from EFTPOS to eCommerce to be routed directly to a client’s bank without intervention for real time acceptance and authentication.

The EFT Networks ICE operates under a philosophy of total System and Physical redundancy delivering the highest uptime rates possible, whilst the transaction network is protected using Solid State and Application Firewalls on all points of ingress and egress.

Every transaction processed through EFT Networks is encrypted using 128 bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption and submitted for authorisation through EFT Networks “Secure Virtual Private Network” (SVPN).

Our commitment to security is also reflected in our swift compliance with Card Schemes security initiatives such as VerifiedByVisa and MasterCard SecureCode.

EFT Networks comprehensive suit of online reporting tools combined with daily transaction reports will ensure that our clients always have access to up-to-date management information allowing Business Managers to make quick and well-informed business decisions. The decision making process is simplified even further with the power of daily reports that are customised to be imported into most existing legacy systems.

I have been astounded by the take-up by card holders and the push from the major banks in Australia, for customer to embrace the VISA Debit card instead of the traditional Credit Card.

This, although advantageous to the banks, provides a much higher risk to the card holder, especially if the card is used online or in a location where the card could be skimmed.

The problem and the advantage of the VISA Debit card is that it allows access to your savings account funds via a VISA transaction.

This sounds great in theory, as there is no need to transfer money from your savings account to periodically pay off the credit card.

The problem exists where the VISA debit card is skimmed or stolen and money is withdrawn from the card. These funds are taken directly from the card holder savings account and not credit, therefore this increases the risk to the card holder not being able to pay bills/mortgage/loans/etc.

In the traditional credit world, if the credit card was skimmed or stolen, the dept remains the responsibility and risk of the bank, until the fraudulent transaction is investigated.

With the VISA Debit Card this risk is placed upon the card holder, who is often convinced to get one of these cards through good television marketing, when opening a new account or establishing an off-set loan, with no idea of the associated risks.

I don’t like the increased risks associated with these cards not being explained adequately to the card holders so the card holder can make an educated decision as to where he/she uses the card (internet, phone, periodic utility payments, ISP charges, etc.)p>

This risk assumes that the card holder does not rely on credit only to live and does not have any savings to withdraw, but the banks may not give you a debit card anyway if this is the case.