Eftpos gets tokenised payments with Bell ID partnership

Dutch payments company Bell ID has teamed up with Eftpos in a partnership that aims to bring tokenisation to its domestic digital payments market.

According to Eftpos, the new offering would enable Eftpos payments to be made securely across various digital platforms and applications, such as mobile, with tokenisation providing additional security by the option of replacing card numbers with unique reference numbers to assist in protecting such critical information.

Bruce Mansfield, Eftpos Managing Director, said the new mobile payments capability would complement Eftpos' centralised payments processing hub, "eftpos hub", currently slated for an upgrade this month, and tokenisation in early 2016.

"It's exciting to be partnering with Bell ID on this important project because they have an excellent international reputation in the dynamic area of mobile payments and tokenisation," Mansfield said.

"This new capability will enhance competition in the Australian mobile payments market and help Eftpos meet the growing needs of this rapidly changing area of payments technology. It will also provide the Australian industry with the choice of a domestic, secure tokenisation service."

The company said its eftpos hub has processed almost 2 million cheque and savings account transactions per day, since its launch in September 2014.

According to Bell ID executive chairman Pat Curran, the partnership will enable Eftpos to better adapt to the market's constantly changing dynamics.

"Bell ID is excited to partner with Eftpos and to contribute to the mobile payments advancement in Australia," Curran said. "With our token service provider platform, Eftpos has the freedom to integrate any of its members to offer secure tokenisation services and provision tokens to a wide array of mobile form factors and channels."

In September, Bell ID announced its host card emulation (HCE) mobile solution was the first vendor to receive certification from three of the largest global payments schemes.

"Despite the market's rapid development, cloud-based mobile payments remain in their infancy so, understandably, issuers are seeking quality and interoperability reassurances both from third party vendors and the payment networks," Curran said at the time.

Earlier this year, Bell ID was chosen by ANZ Bank to enable contactless mobile payments on the smartphones of more than 120,000 New Zealand customers.

Smartphone-based taxi booking service, goCatch entered an agreement to partner with retail, mobile, and online payments provider, Mint Payments last month, in a bid to capitalise on in-taxi card payments; and in July, eWay made the shift into the offline payments space with the launch of its mobile point of sale solution aimed at allowing businesses to accept cashless payments anywhere.