Maintaining cash flow is essential to the continued operations of your business. Having a positive cash
flow allows you to fulfill orders, maintain stock levels, honour debts and expand your business. Without timely
access to your funds you can quickly find your ability to continue your business operations compromised.
eWAY at no stage touches your funds. The eWAY payment gateway is simply a conduit for transaction information to
flow between your website and the banking network. All fund transfers and settlements are handled by your merchant facility
and your customer's card issuer.
As transactions are processed throughout the day, the funds from each successful transaction are held by the Internet merchant facility.
At the end of the day the funds are settled overnight by your bank into your nominated trading account, giving you access to these funds
by the next working day. |  |
Other online payment models hold funds on your behalf. Other than affecting your cash flow, this model raises a number of other issues:
- Disputes - In the event of a dispute between yourself, your customer and/or the organisation holding your funds, any money being held by
that organisation can be frozen. This means you can't access it until the conflict has been resolved. This is no guarantee that you will receive
it either - there are thousands of cases where these funds are never returned to the merchant, and as a result many of these merchants have been
out of pocket and sometimes out of business. Due to the nature of these providers, with their customer-driven policies, they are more likely to judge in
favour of the customer despite any evidence to the contrary.
Communications between merchants and these providers in times of dispute
can also be fractured and disjointed due to the time difference and lack of quality customer/merchant support. With eWAY any disputes regarding monies exchanged between you and your customer is handled by your bank, which is experienced in these
matters and will do their best to resolve it in favour of their customer - you. Australian banks are held to strict rules and regulations in regards to
dispute resolution, whereas other models are largely autonomous. This fact is addressed below.
- Withdrawal of funds - Through eWAY your funds are settled by your merchant facility automatically to your nominated trading account. This means you have
access to these funds the very next working day, allowing you to withdraw money, write cheques, pay invoices and other financial operations essential to
the running of your business. Other online payment models require that you "withdraw" funds from them to a nominated account. This is a fee-based settlement,
costing you further and also costing you in the time taken to manually withdraw the funds. This withdrawal is also dependent on the availability of the provider's
services and your own Internet connection - if either is down then there is no way to transfer the funds.
- Regulations - Australian banks are required to obey laws and regulations when it comes to the handling of funds. Your rights as are merchant are protected by
these rules that are in place to ensure a fair trading environment for all parties. Other online payment models that don't use the banking network are not held to
the same set of rules. These service providers are largely autonomous, offshore entities that purely exist within the legal vacuum that is the Internet. This means that your
rights as a merchant a subject to whims of companies largely self-regulating and untouchable.
As an eWAY merchant you control your funds - your money is yours.