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Real-time Online Credit Card Authorisation and Payment Systems
Paying bills by credit card using a touchtone phone is now an accepted and trusted system for most of the population, and is regularly used for utilities, councils, banks and other businesses. People are not only happy to use this technology but demand that such services are available to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week!
One approach that satisfies this need is to use our hosted pay-per-use service for telephone credit card payments, which provides a cost effective way of offering an automated payments service. However, in some instances there may be some greater customer service opportunities available to you by setting up a dedicated in-house IVR Payments system.
Either way, you can now affordably offer direct bill paying services with the SWIFT IVR PhonePay system - catering for small as well as large transaction amounts.
PhonePay can accept most credit cards and is based on a payment gateway that operates directly with the banks' on-line credit card authorisation and transaction system, allowing users to conduct credit card transactions in real-time, with processing through to your bank account.
In use, the IVR system captures credit card and payment details and then passes the encrypted data to the bank's card processing network. The bank then approves (or rejects) the transaction. This approval is transmitted to the IVR and it provides a bank authorisation receipt number to the caller.
As an added benefit of the use of the Swift Payment Gateway, you can take advantage of the ability to accept online payments via your website.
Legislation in Australia now allows a surcharge on a credit card payment to help defray the merchant’s cost of accepting such payments and we would be happy to discuss how this can be implemented in your service. It is also possible to accept payments using Customer Initiated Direct Debits, which is gaining favour for some users.
The gateway is provided through the CommSecure network, one of Australia's most highly qualified.
Bill Payment Applications
Typical business applications for this payment service include:
- Council Rates and Licences
- Water or Electricity Usage Charges
- Parking Fines
- Magazine or Club Subscriptions
Of course there are numerous other opportunities for companies to accept telephone payments.
Hosted Payment Service
To provide the hosted payments service Swift has established a centrally managed IVR-based Payments Server. This server is connected directly to Telstra E1 (digital) services to provide a high performance, high reliability service with dedicated capacity to meet the large peaks in call volumes that can occur during a billing cycle.
This service is provided on the basis of a small initial service establishment fee, a fixed monthly operating fee plus a scaled fee per payment. Swift Call provides reporting on caller activity in conjunction with the monthly billing cycle.
To use this facility, your company will need to have a merchant relationship with a bank to allow it to accept credit card payments. You will have to negotiate a merchant services fee with your bank, typically a small percentage of the payment amount.
In-house IVR Payment Service
The in-house PhonePay system is based on a dedicated, NT (Win2000) based IVR system that interfaces directly with the bank's network via a special secure communications link (Nodebox). This can be operated on a leased line, but may also be used through an Internet connection.
As the IVR system would be located on your premises it can be integrated with your PABX system (and hence your call-centre staff), eliminating any call transfer costs and allowing more sophisticated call handling and customer service procedures.
As an example, you may at any future date take advantage of this facility to allow call-centre and counter staff to directly process credit card payments received through these facilities. Another option is to accept payments via your own website.
As with any credit card service, you will need to establish a merchant relationship with a bank to allow it to accept credit card payments, and negotiate a transaction fee. Importantly there is only a minimal ongoing transaction fee for processing through the payment gateway.
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