BOCA RATON, Fla. -- National Payment Card LLC (NPC), a provider of automated clearing house (ACH) payment systems at the point-of-sale (POS), has launched an ACH payment card for the gasoline industry at the Zarco 66 station in Olathe, Kansas.
The card provides a way for consumers to pay less for gasoline through an immediate cash reward, NPC said. With the NPC system, station operators substantially lower their processing costs for participating consumers compared with the current charges of credit and debit card interchange and processing fees, it [image-nocss] added.
The fourth-largest operating expense item for convenience and petroleum stores is credit and debit card fees, according to NPC. These costs rose to 7.8% of gross-margin dollars in 2005 it said, citing National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) data. Factors such as more consumers using credit and debit cards to pay for their higher gasoline bills to the increased adoption of reward cards caused a 50% increase in the card interchange fees in the past five years, said NPC.
The NPC system settles the transaction as an electronic funds transfer through the ACH network, thereby saving 48% per transaction for credit cards, 22% per transaction for check cards and 13% for PIN debit cards after the three-cents-per-gallon price rollback at the pump.
The installation at Zarco 66 offers a full-featured system that works with the store's existing POS and pump technology.
We expect this program to give us an instant competitive advantage with today's high cost of gasoline. We prefer to pass rewards on to consumers rather than paying credit card companies merchant fees. This is a win-win' program whereby the consumer and the merchant get rewarded by using this alternative form of payment. Users of our ACH payment card will automatically save every time they fill up, while our business will grow even stronger, said Scott Zaremba, owner of Zarco 66.
The NPC fuel payment solution focuses on changing the consumer's payment method through his or her instant gratification through the price rollback.
To use the card, the customer enrolls in the program via the Internet giving his or her checking account information and consumer-selected user ID. When purchasing gasoline, the consumer swipes the payment card, enters the user ID at the pump or inside the store as a method of payment and the transaction is sent to NPC for validation and processing in a similar manner as a signature debit card.
Boca Raton, Fla.-based NPC's primary product is the Payment Card, a retailer branded program that provides consumers access to funds in their checking accounts so they can pay for goods or services. The Payment Card is not a credit or debit card that is linked through the national banking networks, but rather utilizes a user ID or biometric-based technology for consumer authentication and is processed through the NPC ACH Payment Card network. A Payment Card can be a loyalty card, a membership card or driver's license. NPC has filed a series of patent applications for methods of payment processing with a driver's license.
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