Verifone and Westpac Banking Corporation are aiming to solve payments complexities.
They’re working to make Westpac’s Australian merchant customers lives easier by expanding payments acceptance and shouldering more of the payments security load.
Verifone’s VX 690 mobile terminal supports EMV payment cards, NFC transactions, and mobile wallets, and these will be made available to Westpac’s merchant customers. This means a more agnostic approach to payments acceptance, and the acceptance of UnionPay International cards brings opportunity for merchants to target vacationing shoppers.
Verifone’s Payment as a Service platform is also making it easier for merchants by plugging directly with Verifone’s gateway and taking the responsibilities of security and compliance out of merchant hands.
Vincent Roland, SVP of Global Services Solutions for Verifone shares some key insights into this recent announcement.
PW: How important of a market is Australia for Verifone?
Vincent Roland: Australia is definitely an important market to us as we are more rapidly expanding our services solutions into new geographies. Westpac is one of Australia’s Big Four banks, and with more than 13 million customers it represents one of the largest financial services institutions in Australia and New Zealand. Our partnership with Westpac is the latest example of the global expansion of our Payment as a Service offering, and it shows how we can become a valuable extension to our partners in helping their institutions—and their merchants—solve payments complexity by providing everything they need to create seamless payment acceptance and transaction management across channels—all through a single integrated solution.
Not everyone is familiar with gateways and yet they are the foundation of Verifone’s Payment as a Service offering. In Q2 2015 alone, Verifone’s gateways processed approximately 1 billion transactions for our clients. Through Payment as a Service, we can establish a direct IP connection between our devices and our gateways, which not only speeds onboarding and transaction routing and simplifies device monitoring, but also allows us to remotely deliver software updates, security enhancements and value added services directly to the terminal without the need to re-certify the device. This type of connection also provides merchants the ability to see their daily transaction activity in real-time. Partnering with such a large financial institution as Westpac not only enables us to streamline payments for their merchants, but will also help us to grow the number of transactions we process for merchants through our gateways.
Is this a sign that the industry will lean towards giving merchants support for an inclusive array of payment methods?
The world of payments is becoming very complex for merchants and acquirers alike. Payment complexity continues to increase—especially as merchants and our partners move to accept new payment methods that are emerging and growing in popularity among consumers. This in addition to other factors including security, changing PCI requirements and technology integration is causing banks and merchants—particularly larger retailers—to focus more and more of their resources on managing this complexity. As a result, we expect to continue seeing banks and merchants leveraging Payment as a Service to “get out of the payments business” and focus their time and resources on what matters most— serving customers and growing their businesses. Offering Payment as a Service speaks volumes to our mission here at Verifone, which is to solve payment complexity for merchants and partners.