In line with Arthur Goldstuck of World Wide Worx and authority on internet research and development, PayGate has experienced significant growth in credit card processing. According to World Wide Worx, online retail in South Africa has finally turned around. By the end of this year, online spending on retail goods in South Africa is expected to have grown by more than 35%, after 33% growth in 2006. This is similar to the over 30% growth experienced by PayGate.
The size of client and ticket value of online credit card transactions is well up on 2006. PayGate has been approached by a number of airlines this year who would like to improve the sophistication and reliability of their processing. Some of these airlines are moving to online as part of their eticketing strategy, others to improve the competitiveness of their credit card processing solution and to reduce their credit card processing risk as a result of the dramatic rise in fraudulent credit card transactions.
According to Goldstuck, sale of air tickets online, continue to dwarf the numbers for online retail. The five South African airlines selling tickets online, namely kulula.com, FlySAA.com, Mango, 1Time and Nationwide between them accounted for R2.3-billion in e-commerce in 2006, almost four times the size of conventional online retail. The figure is expected to rise above R3-billion in 2007.
PayGate has experienced an upsurge in the demand for African airlines wanting to move online and the demand for multicurrency credit card processing. PayGate with their partner Datacash PLC (London) has a selective strategy of providing these large companies with a comprehensive internationally competitive credit card processing capability including the ability to process in other currencies and sophisticated fraud and risk solutions.
Due to the increasing scale of online ventures and expectations of 24/7 uptime and reliability of online credit card processing demanded by companies and consumers, the PayGate emphasis over the past 5 years has been on investing infrastructure and service resource that give it the capability to provide the most reliable and solid credit card processing service to the industry.
Goldstuck reports that the number of online retail sites has also grown substantially, from 826 in 2005 to 1014 in 2007. This growth has come despite 310 sites – more than a third of those online at the end of 2005 – closing down from 2005 to 2007. However, no less than 498 new sites came online during this time. PayGate has experienced a significant and consistent growth in online ecommerce sites and a minimal attrition rate.
The PayGate experience is that newcomers to ecommerce and businesses processing credit cards online are now more informed about their choices and the success rate of online businesses has improved over the early days when everyone thought they could start and profit from any ecommerce business.
The online retail market is dominated by 12 sites, which between them account for more than three quarters of online retail sales in South Africa, according to “Online Retail in South Africa 2007”. “There have been many competitors to these dominant players,” says Goldstuck.”They tend to look at the numbers reported by a Pick ‘n Pay or Netflorist, and imagine there is a big market ripe for the picking, not realising just how much infrastructure, development and market knowledge has contributed to those dominant positions. The result is that the biggest drop-off of online retailers occurs precisely where the biggest players are active.” They are the three major malls, M-Web ShopZone, the eBucks Shop and Digital Mall, the two largest online grocers, Pick ‘n’ Pay Home Shopping and Woolworths, the two largest online book retailers, Kalahari.net and Exclusive Books, the largest online florist NetFlorist, the largest online wine retailer Cybercellar, the largest online electronics store Digital Planet, the largest online health and beauty store, Ascot Direct, and the largest auction site, Bidorbuy.co.za.
PayGate is finding that these big guys are now looking for ways to provide a more reliable and comprehensive credit card processing service. More ways to get paid more efficiently and reliably by their customers. These big companies are looking to improve their online credit card processing costs with more effective credit card processing solutions like the ones provided by PayGate who have more than 7 different credit card processing products that can form a comprehensive credit card processing solution reliably.
PayGate was one of the first online credit card processors in South Africa and founders and executive managers Peter Harvey and David Beukes are well known for their excellence in IT project management and payment gateway development in South Africa and internationally. Peter and David are accomplished credit card processing solution architects, developers and project managers.
The PayGate combination of IT solution architecture, project management, high end development capability and international credit card processing experience is attracting the larger corporate online businesses in South Africa and Africa. These big players are using PayGate or approaching PayGate because they require a reliable credit card processing solution that works and that makes them internationally competitive.
For more information on World Wide Worx, please contact:
* Arthur Goldstuck by e-mail on arthurg@internet.org.za, by phone on (011) 7827003 or on his cell phone on 083 3264345
* Steven Ambrose by e-mail on steven@theworx.biz, or on (011) 7820045 or on his cell phone on 083 601-0333
For more information on PayGate, please click the enquiry buttons at the top of the page.
