A group of New Zealand payments organisations has formed a Payments Forum to promote the New Zealand payments industry to the world.
The chief executives of Mobile Commerce (M-com), Provenco, ETSL, Fronde, Direct Payment Solutions, CADMUS, GFG Group, Vcomms, and investment company Howard & Company are participating in the Forum, which has formed in the last four months, says Adam Clark, chief executive of M-com.
The real opportunities for these organisations are offshore, he says.
“If we band together, there is a number of things we can achieve,” he says.
“We can better reflect the advancement of the New Zealand electronic payments market as a group than we can on our own.”
The Payments Forum aims to create a general understanding that New Zealand payment solutions are among the best in the world. Customers, such as big finance or retail organisations, should not have second thoughts about talking to a company in New Zealand about payments, he says.
“They should already have a view that New Zealand is great at payments, and that we lead the world in a number of metrics.”
According to the Forum, New Zealand has many advantages in this sector, such as being one of the first countries in the world to deploy an Eftpos network.
New Zealanders make more electronic payments per capita than anyone else in the world, the group says.
For example, in 2005, they made over 200 at point-of-sale transactions, says the group. New Zealand is also among the first countries in the world to have all of its retail banks offer mobile banking services, they say.
In addition, this country is top-rated when it comes to payment fraud metrics and ranks highest in fiscal transparency according to Transparency International’s 2006 transparency survey, says the Payments Forum.