A direct debit is an automatic transaction that transfers money from your account to another. Direct debits are handy for paying regular bills, such as your monthly phone bill or gym membership. Automatic payment means you don’t have to remember to pay the bill, and you don’t risk any late fees.

Below are two of Venue Smart’s most powerful technologies (together no one else can provide) that ensure we are the most competitive provider in the market.

1) Can least-cost routing benefit my business?

• Typically yes this depends if your business is on a pricing plan that has differential pricing for EFTPOS and international network transactions. This also depends on the average transaction size (value) and whether the EFTPOS rate charged works out to a lower charge than charged by VISA and MASTERCARD.

2) Will every business save?

• Savings will depend on your card mix, transaction volume, transaction size, industry, and pricing plan.
• For merchants that already add a surcharge to pass on the costs, the cost saving should be passed on to the cardholder as the surcharge should be in line with the cost of acceptance for the network to which the transactions are routed.

3) Are there any transaction amount limits for least-cost routing?

• TBC

4) Will least-cost routing also affect credit card payments?

• No. In Australia, the concept of routing choice only applies to debit card transactions (and not to credit card transactions). It also only applies to dual-network cards and cards that only support one network will always be routed over that network.

5) Are protections against fraud and disputed transactions the same for EFTPOS, Visa and Mastercard?

• Chargeback rights are the same for EFTPOS, Visa and Mastercard debit authorised transactions. These cover the full range of losses required by the ePayments Code, such as fraud, unauthorised transactions, goods not received and equipment malfunction or processing errors.

• When you enter your card details, they’re immediately replaced with a Mastercard token.
• The Mastercard token is unique to both you and the business you’re shopping with.
• When you then make a payment, the token is transmitted – not the card details.
• If your card details ever change, the new details are automatically mapped to the Mastercard token. This reduces preventable declined transactions and ensures continuity of your payments.

55% of consumers use card on file and yet 81% are still concerned about the protection of these details. By removing card details in the digital space and substituting in merchant-specific tokens that are encrypted, tokens can only be used with intended issuer and therefore security attacks become more difficult.

• A stolen token can’t be used at merchants without the corresponding cryptogram, so opportunity for fraud is significantly reduced
• Fraud can easily be tracked to a single token and therefore MDES for Merchants enables greater control, as tokens tainted by fraud can quickly be revoked from use
• As a result, consumers operating under a tokenised framework have peace of mind about the security of their payments and therefore are likely to spend 10 times more than digitally inactive customers, often returning up to 3 times more revenue.

Information to gather:

• Total processing amount (per annum)
• Current merchant bank
• Current direct debit provider
• Average transaction amount
• Percentage of credit cards/bank account direct debits
• Direct debit default rate
• Current direct debit statement
• Settlement speed