By Randal Jackson
New Zealand payments system vendor GFG Group has signed international upgrade deals with two banks worth around $1 million. It is now servicing the clients directly rather than through Unisys, which sold the original Unicard card management systems to the banks, one in Chicago and the other in the Dominican Republic.
GFG chairman Ralph Green attributes a rapid growth in business to the company establishing its own professional sales and marketing arm, rather than dealing mainly through resellers.
It has also had success with its FinSim product, software that simulates ATM and Eftpos transactions for testing. Green says banks can be sure by using FinSim that their systems are correctly scaled for market demand.
GFG was invited to present to customers of US switch provider, e-funds. “They liked it so much they bought it themselves,” he says. E-funds owns the Connex and Oasis switching systems run worldwide by financial institutions. It has around 1000 such switches in operation.
The e-funds contract was signed last month and follows a similar deal with American Express. “We’ve signed around US$500,000 in FinSim business in the past two months,” Green says.
“This year we are putting a significant amount into research and development. We’re reinvesting 70% of our net income.” Technology NZ is matching dollar for dollar GFG’s expenditure on R&D.