Dual-role deal users strike gold

By RICHARD WOOD

The National Bank is giving its small-business customers a direct connection into their bank accounts from a popular accounting software package.

The system uses a new version of NZA Gold, or an add-on module for recent versions, available for $150.

The offering has been two years in the making. Both the bank and NZA Gold claim a New Zealand first, and suggest it may be a world first.

"What we've done is integrate our online package with an accounting package," said National Bank ecommerce manager Andrew Cliffe.

NZA Gold managing director and owner Raymond Davy said the system was very different from using internet banking to download account data. It still used the internet, but not the browser.

"Other software can do downloading and importing; ours talks directly to the bank's mainframe."

From within the accounting software bill payments and fund transfers can be initiated as well as reconciliation functions.

Davy said NZA Gold would support the National Bank exclusively for the next two years.

He said NZA Gold was one of the top two small-business accounting packages, with 20,000 users. He did not know how many were National Bank customers.

The bank also did not know how many of its customers used NZA Gold.

Davy said the biggest gain from the deal was being associated with the National Bank.

Demonstrations of the system have been set up on National Bank and NZA Gold