Australia’s payments network, eftpos, on Monday announced it had successfully completed its industry-wide technology infrastructure transformation program, processing the two billionth transaction across its now complete Hub network. Some other achievements and new products in the works are:
- National, centralised processing Hub network is complete, and 2 billion transactions have been processed
- Tap & Pay now enabled on 25 million cards, including 1 million eftpos-only cards
- Tap & Pay terminal network to be completed by the year’s end
- Australia’s first domestic token vault (TSP) complete and ready for commercial deployment
- Secure Mobile payments in testing and ready to launch soon
- Major banks move (off us) ATM transactions to the newly completed Hub network
“The centralised payments Hub provided national, cost effective and secure infrastructure that the industry needed in order to roll out new products and services like Tap & Pay as well as Mobile payments,” said managing director, Mr. Bruce Mansfield.
To date, the newly-completed eftpos Hub network has had zero downtime, while conducting regular releases, changes and processing millions of transactions a day. It is already being leveraged by the industry for its additional capabilities.
Mr Mansfield stated that more than a million Tap & Pay cards had already been issued by Australian financial institutions, and that number would reach well over 3 million cards by the end of the year. More than 20 million multi-network debit cards are also enabled with the Tap & Pay technology.
The new eftpos-only Tap & Pay cards replace the magnetic stripe cards that have enabled Australians to make everyday CHQ & SAV payments since the mid-1980s. These new cards will continue to offer consumers valued benefits such as secure, real-time transactions and less chances of being surcharged.
The national POS terminal upgrade for both Tap & Pay for cards as well as eftpos for Mobile already covers more than 70 per cent of terminals and most major merchants, and will be completed by the industry before the year’s end.
Mr. Mansfield also said that secure Mobile payments would also be enabled with the eftpos TSP, replacing the card number with a unique digital identifier known as a payment token. This onshore token technology will also be leveraged by the industry to secure non-payments services in the future.
“The completion of the eftpos Hub network is a great achievement for the industry and our partners. It represents a significant piece of secure and reliable infrastructure that can bring payments innovation, cost effective processing and healthy competition to new areas in the Australian market,” Mr Mansfield said.
eftpos Tap & Pay as well as eftpos Mobile will be the first products to launch, along with new services to assist rapid change in the industry. It will then diversify beyond bricks and mortar merchants into the digital, such as merchant applications and browsers, while maintaining its secure value proposition.
About eftpos
eftpos is the most widely used debit card system in Australia, accounting for more than 2.2 billion CHQ and SAV transactions in 2016 worth more than $138 billion. For more information on eftpos, please visit: www.eftposaustralia.com.au