SINGAPORE, 23 SEPTEMBER 2008 – Local payment solutions vendor AXS Infocomm, best known for its island-wide fleet of payment kiosks, today announced an enhancement to its payment platform, in order to facilitate more payment modes.
The improved platform, dubbed D-Pay (or Direct-Pay), allows for a direct connection to various banks, so funds can be debited directly from a customer’s bank account. Customers need only have their ATM card and PIN on-hand, for such a transaction. Before D-Pay, transactions at AXS terminals were conducted via NETS (Network for Electronic Transfers of Singapore), a local payment service.
“We are confident that D-Pay will not only be able to offer consumers a wider choice of fulfilment for the AXS Station users, but also new banking functions and features,” said Joey Chang, CEO, AXS Infocomm.
Infrastructure change
According to Chang, AXS also upgraded its backend infrastructure, to facilitate faster transactions at its payment kiosks. Transactions at D-Pay enabled kiosks will be made over IP-based leased lines instead of the current PSTN (Public Switch Telephone Network) lines. According to Chang, this switch to IP-based lines is expected to cut the average transaction time down from 15 seconds to two seconds. AXS also upgraded its data centre equipment, in order to accommodate the transition to D-Pay.
“There will be no need for the kiosks to dial-in to the various financial institutions as they will now be connected all the time,” said Chang. “We can also expect shorter queues due to the reduced average transaction time.”
D-Pay is currently in pilot phase, and limited to customers of DBS Bank and POSB Bank. AXS plans to deploy up to 100 D-Pay enabled kiosks by year-end, with full deployment across all its kiosks by end 2009. D-Pay enabled kiosks are most easily identified by a red numeric keyboard and faceplate, as well as a D-Pay logo.
Banks such as Citibank, HSBC, Maybank and Standard Chartered are scheduled to hop onboard the D-Pay bandwagon by mid 2009. When asked if other local banks such as UOB and OCBC would be part of D-Pay, Chang would only say that the banks had expressed interest, but that nothing had been confirmed.
According to AXS, plans are also underway for payments to be made via credit card and EZ-link card by early next year. AXS, a subsidiary of DBS Bank, had 530 payment kiosks deployed island-wide as of August 2008. Customers have made over 64 million transactions at these kiosks since 2001, with total transaction amount exceeding S$11 billion.
