Dolla payment platform (Venmo for NZ)

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › Dolla payment platform (Venmo for NZ)

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cokemaster

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#3082543 30-May-2023 19:49

Why it’s used is purely a cost perspective. Companies like Spark see it as a good way to squeeze a little bit more out of their account based customers (notice that they won’t charge surcharges for prepaid).

From the merchants perspective, the risk sits between poli/account2account and the customer. From poli/account2account, the risk sits with the bank and the customer. From the banks perspective, the risk sits with the customer for disclosing their credentials that they’ve explicitly been told not to disclose to anyone. Ultimately if any of these services fail - it’s you on the line.

If you don’t want to accept credit cards - Online eftpos exists and can do this, without giving an unknown party access to all your money with little recourse. With 7 day clearances now, you can also just give the customer an account and reference too (if you can accept the latency).

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mike

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#3082545 30-May-2023 19:51

Storing your online banking credentials in a password manager, Google Account or iCloud is also against many bank terms and conditions. The T&Cs are there to protect the bank.

Australia is ahead of us in banking innovation and regulation. Their Commerce Commission equivalent has specifically said screen scraping is all good.

https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/asic-accc-give-green-light-to-screen-scraping-20200228-p54588

mdf

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#3082546 30-May-2023 19:53

In the news today: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/132180888/anz-asb-bnz-and-westpac-given-until-late-2024-to-be-ready-for-open-banking

cokemaster

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#3082548 30-May-2023 20:04

The problem with screen scraping is that you are effectively giving someone full and unconditional access (within the transactional limits imposed on your internet banking account) each and every time this happens.

Who holds the bag when something goes wrong? What happens if something goes rouge and transfers $30K out (most banks will let you do this without requiring a temp limit increase)?

API’s are the way to go. Xero style bank feeds are the way to go. Online eftpos where I get to approve the transaction and what account is the way to go.

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michaelmurfy

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#3082673 31-May-2023 10:27

mdf: It feels like that there is a bit of a detente between the banks and Akahu, Poli and the like. Based on what others more informed than me have said, using these services is against the terms and conditions and is a bad idea security wise. However if the banks really didn't want these services used, there is more they could do to crack down on them.

And I would guess that there are further technical measures to prevent this sort of third party access and screen scraping?.

I posted above about this but I have personally been the one responsible for blocking a few scrapers on some platforms that I looked after. The biggest problem is once you block them customers do not understand and will blame the bank for "being down" or not working. The companies who are scraping also tell customers to basically put pressure on the bank if there are any issues. After a whole lot of calls / emails / secure mail's about "insert scraping service here" not working upper management way above me tells the team to unblock it.

But as somebody who has seen the traffic coming from these services I 100% do not trust them. Not just because of them scraping, but because of what other information they collect without the customer knowing.

Banks hate them, they can't really do anything about them (unless if all banks do this at the same time) and it'll continue to be a problem until open banking gets fully released. The other side of this is the risk that this opens up allowing scrapers from "insert large cloud provider here" that it can be used for other malicious things too as there is no whitelist for these companies. It is simple to stop by simply enabling bot management but the amount of noise from customers when that was enabled was insane as it caused considerable contact centre load.

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Kyanar

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#3106333 20-Jul-2023 16:38

mike: Storing your online banking credentials in a password manager, Google Account or iCloud is also against many bank terms and conditions. The T&Cs are there to protect the bank.

Australia is ahead of us in banking innovation and regulation. Their Commerce Commission equivalent has specifically said screen scraping is all good.

https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/asic-accc-give-green-light-to-screen-scraping-20200228-p54588

Just FYI of course the ACCC would say screen scraping is OK. POLi is owned by the Australian Government.

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mike

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#3106337 20-Jul-2023 16:59

That's not how it works...

But anyway, POLi is being discontinued in Australia at the end of September but has been acquired locally by the existing operator (Merco) to continue here in New Zealand.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/australia-post-to-close-poli-payments-597950

https://www.polipay.co.nz

mdf

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#3107594 24-Jul-2023 14:54

Not sure if this requires a new thread (maybe a general open banking one?), but:

Another new open banking / venmo / request to pay type app: https://volley.nz

However, very differently to all the others, seems to be via bank-approved API: https://blog.bnz.co.nz/2023/07/bnz-and-volley-announce-agreement-to-bring-request-to-pay-app-to-new-zealand

And in the paper: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/132603302/request-to-pay-app-volley-could-simplify-split-bills

Seems to be a way of making a "pull" request for an internet banking transfer which is then approved and paid via existing bank apps, c.f. the traditional "push" payment. Pitched as a way of splitting a bill but I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work as an e-commerce alternative to credit cards or internet banking.

michaelmurfy

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#3107600 24-Jul-2023 15:13

@mdf Yep - this is using open banking. Both ANZ and BNZ are basically ready here (you'll note there are some new open banking type things in the ANZ goMoney app). The key here is "Pay any Volley link directly from your bank’s app" and " We’ll never ask you for your bank password or security codes and we don't need you to send us money to "top up your wallet". Your money stays safe and secure in your bank - where it belongs".

More apps will be coming soon. Online Eftpos is very similar in this regard with using Open Banking essentially to make a payment straight through your banks app.

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