How BPAY Group's open APIs are powering innovative payment solutions

How BPAY Group's open APIs are powering innovative payment solutions

19 November 2019 - By Collaborative Media & Publishing

BPAY Group has launched a new Developer Portal to help organisations to access BPAY APIs and create solutions that support their business and their customers’ needs.

 The portal, initially launched in October with four BPAY Payments APIs, and information about Sypht APIs, creates a one stop shop for developers, product managers and other innovators to build new payment services.

Australian Fintech NoahPay is the first to use both the BPAY and Sypht APIs in a new payment app: Billax. It allows WeChat users – mainly Chinese residents such as students living in Australia – to seamlessly pay their Australian bills using WeChat Pay.

NoahPay Director and Co-founder Ryan Yan said users can open Billax in WeChat, take a photo of their bill to automatically pre-populate the payment page with BPAY biller code, reference number and amount, and then confirm payment using Face ID.

"The majority of our users are international students and their paying parents overseas – 28% of the 812,000 current international enrolments in Australia are from China – with demand going up on a yearly basis," Yan says.

"We've also spoken to a lot of businesses that are interested in connecting to Chinese customers who are more likely to make purchases using WeChat Pay in Australia amongst other Chinese payment methods."

Billax relies on BPAY APIs to perform payment validation; confirm the correct biller code has been entered; process batch files of payments in the correct format; and create a reference number and QR code.

Keith Brown, General Manager, Product Scheme and Business Development for BPAY, says it plans to release more APIs through the BPAY Group Developer Portal.

"We're enabling companies to solve common business frictions to deliver more innovative payment solutions to their customers that make their life easier," says Brown.

Billax also uses Sypht's document data extraction API, which Yan said proved far more accurate than alternatives it trialed, including those offered by large global technology companies.

"Sypht's ability to pinpoint the biller code reference number or the amount in a particular bill is second to none as there's a lot of noise around that particular information."

The Sypht API is also available through the Sypht Self Service Portal. Sypht is part of the BPAY Group family of businesses. 

Sypht CEO Warren Billington says Sypht is an API-based platform and there was a natural fit with the BPAY product.

"There are a lot of other businesses that are looking at ways to improve their customer experiences around payments, and processing of invoices and bills or expenses, where there's absolutely an opportunity for both BPAY and Sypht to be collaborating with those customers," Billington says.

BPAY Group is best known for its BPAY service, which was launched more than 20 years ago. Today, more than half of all BPAY payments are made through a mobile phone or an app.

This article represents the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BPAY. Published by BPAY Pty Ltd.  BPAY payment products are offered by over 150 Financial Institutions. Contact your Financial Institution to see if it offers BPAY payment products and to get the terms and conditions. This is general advice – before using BPAY payment products please review the terms and conditions and consider whether BPAY payment products are appropriate for your personal circumstances.