Time to spruce up the e-shop front

By ADAM GIFFORD

New Zealand e-commerce sites need to grow up if they are to be internationally competitive.

That's the view of Richard Shearer, general manager of Taranaki web hosting company WebFarm, a reseller of Jersey-based WorldPay's e-commerce products and services.

"Sites need to mature in e-commerce functionality. If you want to compete globally, you need to be as discerning about your shop as your product," Mr Shearer said.

WebFarm and WorldPay held a series of seminars last week to outline the services offered and promote WorldPay's Click and Build store builder.

WorldPay has 10,000 customers around the world, including almost 200 through WebFarm.

The core of WorldPay's business is its payment gateway, which enables websites to take payments in any currency.

Strategic sales director Adam Kerr, who has just been appointed WorldPay's Asia Pacific head, said companies could be trading within 48 hours using the streamlined WorldDirect package.

Apart from the $395-a-year membership charge, WorldPay collects a 4.5 per cent transaction fee, which includes the credit card fee.

"There are no additional charges and no integration charges," he said.

As WorldPay has "master merchant" status, its customers, known as merchants, do not need to get separate approval to accept credit card payments.

WorldPay also does away with the need to rent secure servers. As the transaction is handled on the WorldPay site rather than the merchant's, the merchant never sees the number. Mr Shearer said that while the payment feature could be customised so it looked like part of the site, many WebFarm customers preferred to point out the transaction was being processed by WorldPay.

The main competitor in New Zealand is the BNZ's Currency Select.

Russell Briant, the BNZ's electronic payments product manager, said implementation costs for Currency Select were about $500, depending on which reseller was used.

Some providers of the service are charging $49.50 a month instead of an upfront fee.

Users must register as BNZ merchants. The merchant service fee is variable, depending on total sales, average ticket size and risk.

Currency Select can accept payments in 13 currencies, but settlement must be in New Zealand dollars.

"We were set up to support New Zealand business," he said.

Customers include Beauty Direct, Instant Speech, Internet Medicine and Manawatu Software Solutions.

WorldPay handles 160 currencies and can settle in more than 30.

Mr Kerr said a lot of bank solutions around the world were limited by technology platform issues.

"We see ourselves as a financial services organisation which is platform independent."

WorldPay was founded in Jersey in 1993 with an electronic commerce focus.

Its first e-commerce product was developed with Barclays Bank in 1995, and the following year it teamed up with NatWest Bank to develop its multi-currency solution.

NatWest now owns 13 per cent of WorldPay, but Mr Kerr said it was free to work with other banks.