Globetrotter Corporate Travel founder and director John Battley rated a finance company that he was considering doing business with so highly, he literally put his money where his mouth was and bought into it. That was about two years ago and the company was Brisbane-based eMerchants, a developer and supplier of various payment transaction solutions.
Mr Battley said he had since invested more than $3 million in the company and moved the administrative headquarters to Perth after securing a 60 per cent share in the business.
“I was approached to have a look at them because of their products in the corporate expense management area,” Mr Battley said. “Considering I was an accountant in a former life, I was blown away by it.
“Like the Remington story [of Victor Kiam], I liked the company so much I bought a controlling interest in the end.”
Mr Battley said ASIC licensed eMerchants to issue debit cards in 2004. “It’s the only company issuing debit cards outside banks,” he said. “Since then eMerchants has issued more than 1.7 million cards.”
Mr Battley said the company now targets “microtransactions” under $1000. “That’s where this technology is world class – in essence it increases control, improves processes and for promotion and marketing, offers new functionality,” he said.
Despite the lack of finance forthcoming from the banking sector following the impact of the GFC, last week Mr Battley launched three new products: a corporate expense card, a cashless mine site card and a rent payment card. All products are available with real time banking, personalised corporate branding and even personal identification options and swipe card technology.
The corporate expense card, either an EFTPOS debit card or MasterCard allowing global access, gives budgetary control to the company with blacklists and whitelists for approved and non-approved expenditure, while giving employees the ability to immediately seek more funds if necessary via phone, SMS or email.
The rental payment system aims at improving the flow of funds between the tenant and the landlord or agent through SMS and email alerts to both parties.
While the cashless mine site card hoped to improve quality of life for workers by individually tailoring the card with options for full identification, payroll and allowances built into the card.
