SA payD platform expands to Absa

2013-02-22 11:00

Money. (Duncan Alfreds, News24)

Duncan Alfreds

Cape Town - The e-commerce payD platform has been expanded to more customers with a new agreement signed between Oltio and Integrated Processing Solutions (IPS).

The agreement means that the platform, which allows mobile payments using the phone as a remote point of sale device, will be expanded to Absa customers.

"This transaction not only provides us with the opportunity to increase our product offerings but also forms an integral part of our diversification strategy," said Hans Bodenstein, managing director of IPS.

The payD platform has about 300 000 customers registered in SA and an Africa-wide rollout is slated for 201.

Merchants have responded favourably to the technology that allows customers to pay for goods and services by entering their debit card details and both MTN and Vodacom have launched top up systems based on the technology.

Innovations

"The 450 e-commerce merchants are particularly excited as they are now able to have debit card customers make payments without risk and a lower cost to them than accepting credit card. To date there has been no fraud on the e-commerce version of payD," said Dave Parratt, Oltio's head of new business development told News24.

He was careful to note that the platform works on mobile devices in light of the low number of internet-connected computers in SA.

"Yes it works in the m-commerce side too. MTN and Vodacom systems use USSD [Unstructured Supplementary Service Data] to initiate a transaction. We have other successful players selling for example electricity over the phone."

One of the key innovations planned for the future include the rollout of a money transfer service that would particularly suit people who want to send cash to relatives in neighbouring countries.

One of the concerns with mobile payment platforms is that some countries like Kenya have hinted that they intend to tax these more informal payment methods.

Safety

Parratt said that it was early days to commit on these developments and the impact they might have on mobile money platforms.

"This would appear to be unique to Kenya at this stage and thus it is too soon to speculate on this move for other regions."

While the platform has not been subject to a case of fraud, the company said that establish practice ensured safety.

"Normal processes related to card transactions apply. No new processes are required. Note there is no new wallet involved. It is a card purchase. As the PIN is included in the transaction there is positive identification of the customer," said Parratt.

The user's bank card PIN is linked to a SIM card, allowing purchases to be made online.


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