eftpos launches new digital payments capability in Australia

By Edil Corneille

Today, Sydney-based eftpos announced the launch of a new digital payments capability that aims to boost productivity for Australian businesses by enabling funds to be both deposited or withdrawn from an account in real-time. The new Deposit and Withdrawal messaging capability is live and available, with the payments app Beem It the first to launch using the message set which could also be used for a range of productivity-boosting peer-to-peer or business-to-consumer use cases such as insurance payouts, government disbursements, rebates or instant payroll.

eftpos CEO Stephen Benton enunciated that the new capability could significantly enhance productivity for many businesses by replacing manual processes with real-time transfer of funds between parties, while also providing enhanced transparency and controls.

He added that the new Deposit and Withdrawal message set was an excellent example of innovating on top of the eftpos card infrastructure, and Beem It was the logical first choice for launch, by facilitating real-time transfer of funds for its peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.

“Many Australian businesses have the potential to benefit from these alternative low cost and real time payments which enable the secure deposit or deduction of funds from a cardholder’s account,” Benton said.

“This capability is good for Australia because it aims to boost productivity by automating the manual and cost inefficient transfer of funds, using eftpos’ existing and trusted Australian card network with access to hundreds of thousands of Australian merchants and millions of consumers.

“Deposit and Withdrawal allows Beem It to use eftpos on the end-to-end P2P transaction between Australian multi-network debit cardholders – initiating the payment from the payer’s bank account, and depositing the funds to the payee’s bank account in seconds.”

eftpos purchased Beem It in November last year, having acquired the Australian payments app that enables consumers to send and receive money using their phone in seconds, so the company could further advance the Beem It business and expand in the use of digital wallets as a whole in Australia.

Benton apprised that as Australians increasingly digitalise their transactions, there is a great opportunity to harness a more sophisticated funds transfer process, enabling local banks and businesses to offer a broader range of payments capabilities and provide a better digital alternative to the previously used ‘reverse’ eftpos.

“Deposit and Withdrawal capability opens up lots of new use cases and business opportunities such as peer to peer transfers, third party payment initiated withdrawals, insurance payouts, payroll disbursement, rebates including medical and other government rebates, loyalty cashback, wallet funding, gift card loading and newsagency lottery payouts, just to name a few,” Benton said.