The POLi Payment Service

POLi is an innovate payments system designed to broaden the choice of online payment options by creating the ability to transfer funds directly between a customer’s bank account and a merchant.

Key Benefits for Merchants

• Increases the payment choice for customers
• Reduce the risk of bad debt and lost stock resulting from card fraud
• No cash deposit/bond requirements with downstream acquirers
• Potential access to the 15% of UK adults who do not have a credit or debit card
• Real-time receipt system can enable faster shipping of goods and improved stock management
• Very low repudiation risk
• Generally less expensive than cards
• No requirement to store sensitive customer information
• Simple payment reconciliation options
• Very low decline rate

Key Benefits for Consumers

• Increased choice of online payments methods
• Reduced risk of exposure to card fraud
• No need to divulge sensitive personal and financial information to merchants
• The transaction takes place using the customer’s existing online bank account that they already know and trust
• Uses and works seamlessly with the banks own security systems
• The customer knows that they can afford a purchase immediately and there is no risk of having purchases declined or having to obtain separate account statements at a later time

How POLi works

Simple: The service uses the widely available Microsoft .Net framework and downloads a small secure browser to the customers desktop. The customer then uses this system to make a bank transfer payment and the merchant obtains immediate confirmation that a payment has been initiated. The system works with both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Secure: Because it uses the existing online banking infrastructure, it is more secure than card systems. According to the latest (Mar 08) APACS figures card-not-present fraud has increased 37% but online banking fraud has decreased 33% to less than 10% of the value of CNP fraud.

POLi supports mulit-factor authentication to banking websites. The customer can easily confirm that they are at a genuine site and not a phishing site. They can check the certificate, ensure the URL is good, check that the site is HTTPS and use a banks own systems (for example Barclays PIN Sentry) to add further confidence, security ad comfort to the customer.

Trusted: In Australia POLi accounts for an average of 23% of payments on merchant websites where it is available as a payment option. POLi in the UK works with the major high street banks – Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, LloydsTSB, Halifax, RBS & First Direct.

Availability: The POLi service is available in the UK exclusively via NETBANX, the leading full service electronic payments processor. Pricing is competitive to debit card payments and based on merchant transaction volume.