Payment24 News
Paradigm Group, an innovative South African-based information and communications technology (ICT) company, today announced the fleet and loyalty modules of its new generation and locally-developed retail and commercial platform – Payment24.
Payment24 is a very light infrastructure, low-cost, hardware agnostic and open platform based on Microsoft technology, which provides innovative technology-based payment solutions that are initially focused on fleet fuel management, and fleet card systems for oil companies and auto dealerships.
“Payment24 is a new generation solution in this field and utilizes and embraces many of today’s technologies such as smartphones and contactless technology that provides real-time online dashboards and, also allows users to interface their own software that may provide additional services where appropriate,” commented Shadab Rahil, Managing Director of the Paradigm Group. “In addition, the software incorporates a vast range of controls and reporting capabilities that provide monitoring and security information not previously available as well as providing the capability for changing purchasing authorization and spending criteria quickly and easily. In this regard, our solutions incorporate a unique ability to independently verify a specific vehicle on the forecourt together with the identification of the driver. This in turn provides our customers with the peace of mind that their vehicles were on the forecourt at the time of fill and in addition, allows them to track which drivers are refilling when and where.”
The current systems available tend to be very hardware intensive, extremely susceptible to fraud, and provide minimal real-time capabilities. “Payment24 has addressed these and many other important issues and provided a platform going forward that will open up many new opportunities for this industry and its partners/customers.
“From a mobile perspective, we support the three main operating systems, i.e. Android, iOS, and Microsoft Windows, and, will provide any terminals that may be required,” continued Rahil. “We believe that this is the first mobile fleet fuel management system that is appropriate to SMEs and thus, can be managed by fleet companies rather than the fuel companies and/or banks, especially as it provides a low cost roll-out model with little or no infrastructure or start-up costs.”
“We own the intellectual property for this software, which therefore resides in South Africa and, the majority of the software development has also been done in this country by our own staff,” concluded Rahil. “To date, we already have live pilots with two large retail fuel companies in South Africa and Mauritius with another in Namibia going live in Q4; and, there are many more installations and clients waiting in the wings for this solution. These initial modules are the key ones, but there will be more value-add modules to follow over the coming months.”
Other modules that will be released at a later date include prepaid services, eWallet, eCouponing, and customer engagement capabilities such as Bluetooth Beacons & Geo-Fencing, which are used to interact in real-time with customers within a retail environment.
