(7 December 2005 – Australia) Commonwealth Bank of Australia is set to roll out 20,000 new EFTPOS terminals to its merchants by the end of this year.CBA has just ordered another 10,000 of the K71 “new generation” terminals from Keycorp, its largest single order to date, taking the number overall to 90,000.
The new terminals will offer customers more than 150 products, such as gift cards, road toll passes, magazine subscriptions, and mobile and home phone recharge, among others.
CBA recently added the BPOINT over the counter bill payment service to its terminals which allows merchants such as newsagents, pharmacies and convenience stores to process their customers’ bills at the counter.
Keycorp said it had spent a year developing new hardware and software specifically for the CBA.
Keycorp general manager, Payment Solutions, Rohan Ganeson, said the K71 terminals were considered reliable and robust by merchants and that the new generation had built on that reputation.
“There is a rapidly growing market for value added services at the point of sale because they drive additional traffic to stores,” he said.
Ganeson said the terminal acted as a “virtual store”.