Banks, retailers and Payments NZ working on EFTPOS upgrade that would enable payments via mobile phones

By Gareth Vaughan 

Banks, retailers and Payments NZ are working on enabling EFTPOS payments via mobile phones.

A spokeswoman for EFTPOS New Zealand, one of two providers of the EFTPOS payment system, told interest.co.nz the move was separate to the Trusted Service Manager (TSM) initiative currently under way.

"The TSM is effectively the common infrastructure to allow the secure provision of payment cards (as well as loyalty cards and coupons etc) to a consumer's NFC (Near Field Communication) enabled smartphone. This in turn allows the consumer to use the phone for payment at 'contactless' enabled EFTPOS terminals," the EFTPOS NZ spokeswoman said.

"In the first instance, the payment cards will be VISA or MasterCard credit, debit or prepaid cards as the technology to enable the contactless payment is proprietary to these schemes."

"However, separately, the industry (banks, retailers and Payments NZ) is evaluating the potential to upgrade the technology supporting the traditional EFTPOS card to allow these payment cards to be migrated to mobile phone based payments in the same way as VISA/MasterCard cards," the EFTPOS NZ spokeswoman added.

Payments NZ oversees the domestic payments system and is owned by ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac, Kiwibank, TSB Bank, HSBC and Citibank.

Phil Deason, head of mobile ventures at Paymark which is the second  EFTPOS payment system provider and is owned by New Zealand's big four Australian owned banks, said there was a lot of interest in the payments community about what the future holds for EFTPOS.

"It's the subject of a lot of discussion. And I know that several banks are exploring what they do with that, what the possibilities are. And that includes how you enable it, what sort of application would you use, and how would that work," Deason said. "Banks are certainly looking at what they do with the future of EFTPOS."

EFTPOS NZ, recently sold by ANZ to US company VeriFone Systems for about US$57 million (about NZ$71 million), is already deploying contactless enabled EFTPOS devices, something key to the development of mobile payments initiatives, the EFTPOS NZ spokeswoman said.

 "We are also introducing new technology that will allow much more flexible deployment of added value applications to the EFTPOS terminal and merchant point of sale system to facilitate not just mobile payments, but also loyalty, couponing and other merchant programmes."

"We are introducing a range of new devices that allow merchants to use mobiles phones and tablets to accept card payments as well as provide portable point of sale functionality to merchants," the EFTPOS NZ spokeswoman added.

Meanwhile, the TSM project incorporates a mobile wallet trial involving telcos Telecom, Vodafone and 2degrees. Westpac, Auckland Transport and Telecom have trialled the technology. The idea is that users tap their phone over a special contactless terminal, in place of an EFTPOS or credit card.

Deason said significant progress in the mobile wallet trial had been made and announcements were coming soon.

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