Interactive Purchase and Payment System (IPPS)

IPPS is a telephony-based purchase and payment facility.

IPPS allows purchases to be made (i.e. from catalogues etc.) via an interactive voice response simply by entering the product reference and price and paying immediately by credit Card. The System has automatic Credit Card authorisation facilities with all major Australian Banks.

This module may be utilised as a straightforward bill payment service as well. Its major advantage is that it eliminates service provider fees when installed in-house, or it is more cost effective than other service providers when used as a bureau service.

IPPS Access

Your customers are able to access the IPPS system through:

		An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.
		A Customer Service Representative  In a contact centre  At a counter
		The Internet

IPPS is available in-house or via a bureau service.

In-House System
As an in-house system, IPPS operates on a standard IBM (or equivalent) Server.
It also requires access to your PABX or directly to the telephone network for customer telephone access.

The major benefit of having the in-house system is that there are NO service provider charges.

Therefore, the system will provide a rapid return on investment, usually in a matter of months, depending upon your transaction volumes. Thereafter, significant ongoing cost savings will be achieved.

Bureau Service
The bureau service is available for those businesses that:

		Have lesser transaction volumes.
		Wish to trial the system.
		Require a Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery capability.

IPPS Schematic

As shown above, with IPPS, customers have the options of paying with their credit card via the phone to an IVR or a live agent or over the counter. An Internet capability is also available with IPPS.

How does it work?

A customer makes a call to a predefined telephone number which is answered by the IPPS system.

IPPS requests the client's account number (or bill reference number) followed by the amount to be paid, the credit card number and the expiry date on the credit card. Alternatively, products and services can be selected for purchase either through a series of questions (ie. IVR menu) or via direct product number entry from a catalogue.

IPPS then performs a basic validation on the expiry date to check that the card number has sufficient digits and the amount entered is within the parameters set by your organisation.

The customer data is encrypted and electronically transferred to the bank for processing. If the transaction is approved, the resulting reference number from the bank is passed back to the customer.

Should the bank not approve the transaction, the customer is notified that the transaction was declined.

The bank transfers the successful transaction amount into your account.

If IPPS is unable to handle the incoming call, i.e. the caller does not have a touch phone or has entered incorrect data several times; the system will then transfer the call to a predefined operator(s) who can then process the transaction through their PC terminal into the system.

A daily report is generated by the system, which shows the client's account number, the amount paid, the date and the time at which the transaction occurred. This file is in standard CSV format, which easily allows data to be electronically uploaded into most in-house financial systems.

The in-house system is extremely versatile and can easily be custom designed or modified to incorporate ever-changing needs of businesses. Other features include: