jamtronix

Personally, I'm not that convinced PayPal is such a big deal here in Oz - with BECS direct deposits Australians already have a pretty cheap and easy way to send and receive money . So PayPal may be a competitor to BECS, but I don't think it changes the game in the way that it does in countries without a low-cost bank-to-bank transfer system.

let's put this to the test - I just did an ebay search for leaf blowers. There were a total of 9 results. 6 of them accepted payment by direct deposit but not PayPal, 2 took direct deposit AND PayPal, 1 took neither, none took only PayPal. Compare this to the first 5 results from US sellers, ALL of them accepted PayPal, none of them wanted a direct deposit.

So let's say PayPal is NOT going to be as disruptive here as it is in the US. It will certainly compete with BECS, and force the banks to reduce costs and add features, but I doubt it will ever really be used much outside of ebay.

But I still think there is room for a big shake-up in payments. But where I see the room for innovation is in getting a closer integration between the payment system and financial record keeping for consumers and SMEs. It seems absurd that so much work is done pumping data out of POS systems into things like Loyalty Programs and stock control systems (that can then talk to supply chain management systems that talk to wholesaler's systems) and yet I still get handed a tiny little thermal printed receipt that I then have to type in to MYOB or Excel or whatever.

I know there's some niche products like fuel cards, which use custom (retailer specific) extensions to EFTPOS transactions to include lots of details about the goods and services being paid for.That way the fuel card issuer can send you a single monthly statement (or even make it available for electronic download) that has all the data you need for your financial records for vehicle expenses.

This works great for expenses related to company cars (which is certainly a huge market) but unfortunately there's not yet a more general solution here. I guess there's a few ways this could happen. Maybe AS2805 could be extended so each EFTPOS transaction includes the full shopping basket being paid for (including GST on each item), and then my bank website  could let me download the data or even better, let me assign some kind of expense category to each line item, and maybe even do some of my BAS calculations for me (assuming I tell the bank my ABN, and that the card is being used to run a business, so all GST I pay with that card is claimable). That's a pretty huge migration though (i.e. upgrading every single EFTPOS terminal  and every POS system in OZ), can't see that happening any time soon.

Or maybe as POS systems get smarter and broadband becomes ubiqutious, there might be room for some kind of multi-retailer loyalty program where the benefits for the consumer include electronic access to the transactional data that is collected in some industry standard format like OFX.

Or... maybe I'll just stfu and keep collecting those crappy thermal paper receipts and typing them in to Excel every time my wallet gets so full of the damn things that I can't sit down anymore.