ePayment Gateway
September 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized
Ramadhan Kareen everyone, I hope that all of you guys are having a great time with your families this year.
I wanted to post about this earlier, but my previous post was lost and I only got the energy to do so now.
The ePayment gateway that the ITA has launched the other day is a system for government authorities and local companies to accept payments online. This was implemented in Oman with the help of MasterCard and Bank Muscat.Â
Before the ePayment gateway was launched you couldn’t create a form to accept payments through a website so that you receive funds to be paid to a local bank account in Oman. You can now create an online store where people can use their credit cards to pay money directly to your local bank account here in Oman in return of the goods you sell.
Any government agency or company wishing to make use of this system can apply at the ITA for it. Upon making an application to the ITA, a company will be given specific enrollment requirements which it must satisfy. I do not know if there are any minimum capital requirements for a company to have to be able to apply for ePG access.
Once a compay is accepted by the ITA, it will be required to enter into an agreement with a bank to process the payments made to it through the ePG. Â The ITA has a list of qualifying banks, currently, I think, Bank Muscat is the only bank on the list.
To be able to connect to the ePG a company will have to pay the following fees:
- Membership payment – Paid once.
- Maintenance Fee – Paid monthly.
- Transaction Fee – Paid per transaction.
I do not know the actual fees/percentages and it is unknown if the rates will be the same for everyone.
Anyway, the ITA also obviously has some technology and operation requirements in order to let companies use the ePG.
Companies which ran the pilot ePG program in Oman are Oman Mobile and OmanBay.  I tried logging into my Oman Mobile account online to check it out, but I couldn’t because I don’t remember the password and their password reminder form for some reason fails to send me the reminder email.
If I remember correctly, all of the currently offered online payment services through the ePG accept only credit cards such as Visa, Master Card, Amex, and Diners Club. Not a single service accepts payments through debit cards such as Visa Express – and that is a real bummer because the majority of people do not have credit cards, but have debit cards. In fact, not everyone can qualify for credit cards (andI I Â advise poor Omani people NOT to get themselves a credit card at all because they will misuse it).Â
It is NICE to be able to make payments online through credit cards, but I really don’t think that I will be regularly paying for my phone bills using my credit card – there is always this hassle of having to clear the credit and I cannot be bothered to set up automatic deduction.
Most online stores around the world (e.g. Amazon.com and eBay Paypal) accept debit cards. The majority of young people who are likely to try out new things online (Age less than 25 years) are not likely to have credit cards. For online business to really catch on people should be able to pay online directly through their debit cards and not only through credit cards.
The promotion of the ePG and making online payments scares me a little bit because I do not think that the public is aware enough of the risks of using their credit cards online. If we are going to try and tell the average Omani person that he should be paying his police ticket fees online, I think that he should have a crash course on the risks of putting his credit card number online as well. Even though more and more Omani people are using the internet, many do not know the basics on how to avoid installing random spyware toolbars, set up a firewall, or even clear the cache after using a public computer, let alone the fact that nobody knows what phishing is or what VeriSign means.
The introduction of the ePG is a step forward for sure, but I think that this is also the time when public education of internet security should become a serious issue.
