eftpos unveils digital product strategy for members, FinTechs and retailers

By Edil Corneille

Australia’s eftpos announced an updated digital product and technology strategy for rollout over the next two years which provides greater clarity to members, FinTechs and retailers about opportunities for innovation and collaboration. The digital strategy has five key elements viz mobile wallets, eCommerce, digital identity, APIs and FinTech access, and the national QR code payments rollout.

eftpos CEO Stephen Benton said the strategy aims to create greater value, ease and security for consumers and businesses by enabling compelling innovations that enhance the digital commerce experience.

Benton said much of the work was already well underway and the business was deeply engaged with members and industry participants to finalise detailed rollout schedules over the next two years.

“The eftpos digital product strategy has been devised with an Australian focus, creating world-class innovations to compete against global players. The strategy we embarked on two years ago aimed to transition eftpos from a card present retail business to a major player in the centre of Australian eCommerce that leverages our world-class technology investments,” Benton said. “It’s been a journey not without challenges, but it has come together better than we could ever have hoped, with a keystone being the recent acquisition of Beem It.

“In many ways, eftpos was Australia’s first FinTech and our digital strategy builds on that history to deliver on eftpos’ purpose – to do good for Australia. We aim to do this by engaging with members, FinTechs and retailers to make everyday payments easy, secure, smart and cost efficient.”

Benton said the growth of debit card transactions in Australia made eftpos’ digital strategy even more important for competition and innovation. Debit cards are where competition is thriving in Australia today. Debit cards are by far the most popular payment choice for Australians as they move from cash and credit during this challenging time. Of the almost one billion electronic transactions per month in Australia, around 70 per cent are now on debit and that number is growing every month.

Many of the digital initiatives leverage eftpos’ centralised payments infrastructure, the eftpos Hub, that was built in late 2014 and the Token Service Provider that went live in 2016. Together, these assets provide locally-based, secure and accessible real time payments infrastructure. The resilient Hub infrastructure has been running at zero downtime since launch and enables local FinTechs and financial institutions to access, innovate and compete on top of the eftpos payment rails.