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Local start-up takes its tech abroad

Bonnie Tubbs
By Bonnie Tubbs, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 05 Nov 2014
Thumbzup's locally manufactured mobile point-of-sale solution is being piloted by one of Australia's biggest banks, with the FastPay reader set for launch there next year.
Thumbzup's locally manufactured mobile point-of-sale solution is being piloted by one of Australia's biggest banks, with the FastPay reader set for launch there next year.

Thumbzup, the local tech start-up behind Absa's recently launched mobile point-of-sales solution ? the Absa Payment Pebble ? has spread its wings abroad.

The firm has partnered with the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) - Australia's third largest bank by market capitalisation.

ANZ announced this morning ? or evening, Australia time ? that a mobile point-of-sale solution it has been working on with thumbzup for some time, would be introduced in the Australian and New Zealand market during the first half of 2015. There are plans to expand into Asia, where it also has a significant presence.

Similar to SA's Payment Pebble, the solution is a card reader device that works with ANZ's FastPay payments app, which connects through the audio-jack port of an iOS or Android device. The device, which is both EMV and PCI compliant, will be named and commercially marketed after FastPay.

Simple, secure solution

Kate Gibson, GM of small business at ANZ, says the partnership with thumbzup and resultant device comes in response to feedback from the group's business customers, who have a natural caution when it comes to handing their financial details. "We wanted a product that gave customers confidence; a mobile card reader that was extraordinarily secure.

"Also, while you may look at Australia and see an educated, tech-savvy market, we wanted to introduce something that was easy to use - for both the merchant and the card-holder."

ANZ describes the FastPay reader in a statement: "The device meets all industry security standards and features an innovative, secure PIN entry method that allows ANZ's business customers to process credit or debit cards quickly and securely on a mobile device."

Term glossary

EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa. It is a global standard for inter-operation of chip cards and integrated chip card capable POS terminals and ATMs, for authenticating credit and debit card transactions.
PCI stands for Payment Card Industry. The PCI Data Security Standard is a set of requirements designed to ensure all companies that process, store or transmit credit card information, maintain a secure environment.

ANZ CEO Philip Chronican considers the solution to be "the most secure way to process mobile payments".

Stafford Masie, CEO and founder of thumbzup, says this is the first of a line of international plays to come, with Latin America one of the markets in the offing. "[Australia and New Zealand] is a big market for us and we are leveraging the work we did with Absa to take the solution to the Asia Pacific (APAC) region and beyond. We had a lot of challenges in SA and it's very exciting to be in a market with less friction - a market with a higher penetration of bank cards."

The solution is manufactured locally, he notes, in Johannesburg's Randburg suburb, and will be exported from here.

Local players

SA's largest bank by customer numbers, Absa, unveiledits smart card-reader device, the Payment Pebble, in November 2012. Smaller rival Nedbank followed about two months later, with its own solution, PocketPOS.

In July, local mobile payments start-up Emerge Mobile commercially launched its smartphone payment card acceptance solution, The Edge, which uses the start-up's own financial services brand, iKhokha, as its go-to-market vehicle.

About three months ago, First National Bank (FNB) told ITWeb it was working on its own solution, which it planned to launch "in the coming months". This was about two years after FNB penned a deal with UK company Powa Technologies to offer its mobile device in the country.

Alan Scoular, CEO of merchant services at FNB, said in August that FNB would make use of Powa Technologies' mPowa technology. This works by using a free mobile phone app and a reader that connects to a smartphone or mobile device by plugging into its headphone socket or connecting via Bluetooth.

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