Kenyan govt confesses e-payment bungle

Kenya's Treasury has admitted it is facing challenges in implementing the new electronic payment system, says Daily Nation.

The Treasury has owned up that the failure in its electronic payment system was the reason behind the delays in the disbursement of the October salaries for hundreds of civil servants.

The government had introduced the Electronic Fund Transfer Payment System as part of efforts to improve service delivery. It was rolled out to ministries served by the Central Bank of Kenya, to assist in reducing huge idle cash resources.

Metered billing may be one telecom service provider response to the growing success of over-the-top (OTT) video, one network operator has said, according to Light Reading.

"Some of our consumers are using much more bandwidth than our enterprise customers," said Paul Bertino, director of product management and marketing for HickoryTech, an independent CLEC and fibre optic network operator in Minnesota.

Service providers need to determine the impact of OTT video and then figure out how to monetise the extra network bandwidth being delivered, he added. And that may bring metered billing into play, even though that is unpopular with consumers and regulators.

Electronic payment vendor Hypercom has signed a $50 million five-year deal with Westpac Banking Corporation in Australia, reports ZDnet Australia.

The vendor will service the bank's entire fleet of 80 000 terminals. The deployment will start next year.

The move comes as Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank also roll-out new terminals, however with contactless payment capability.