Merchants and Payments

EFTPOS stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at the Point of Sale. It is the term used to describe an electronic payment system (or machine or terminal) that enables the taking of payments by debit, credit and charge cards. EFTPOS machines – which can be standalone or connected to a Point of Sale (POS) system – facilitate the movement of funds from a customer’s card account to a nominated business’ bank account.

Then there is eftpos (not in capitals), which is the debit card payment system that takes funds directly from a customer’s cheque or savings transaction account to pay for purchases in store.

Every business is different, so will benefit from different payment solutions including combinations of services – such as EFTPOS in store and a virtual terminal for phone and mail payments out back.

Some machines integrate with Point of Sale (POS) software and some are standalone, meaning you manually key-in the amount to be paid.

Then there are eCommerce payment gateways and systems for handling batch and/or regular payments. Request a call back from a member of the Westpac merchant services team if you’d like to discuss options that may suit your business.

It’s worth carrying out research to help you identify the right payment system for your business needs. A great place to start could be our handy Payment Solution Selector Tool, which is designed to help you find payment products that may match your specific requirements.

Yes, if it is compatible. Having an EFTPOS machine that integrates with your Point of Sale system helps speed up payments and avoid errors, as you won’t have to key each amount into your terminal. Westpac offers Presto Smart that integrates with a variety of popular POS systems and EFTPOS 1i that integrates with a range of Linkly POS systems.

Systems vary by provider, but with Westpac systems the terminals generally connect via Wi-Fi, ethernet or the mobile network. If the network has an outage, transactions are stored offline in the terminal until the network is back up and running, at which point they will be transferred. Alternatively, with systems other than the EFTPOS 1i, Westpac customers can connect via their Wi-Fi to maintain live payment transfers.