Product Overview

There are multiple manufacturers of Point of Sale (POS) terminals on the market. There are also large numbers of manufacturers of card readers and PIN Entry Devices (PEDs). These card readers can accept a wide variety of cards including debit cards, credit cards, loyalty cards and fuel cards for motor vehicles. These cards are provided by a wide range of issuing organizations each with their own Electronic Payment Systems (EPS). Interconnecting the POS systems, card readers and EPSs is a complex task.

EFTLink is an efficient, platform independent way of providing the connection. It is written in Java, distributed as a Java library and readily added to the software of individual POS terminals.

EFTLink is a router and protocol converter that presents a standard interface to a payment client (typically for a POS) and links to any card readers or authorization systems in use at the retailer. The interface with the authorization system is therefore separate from the POS, removing any impact of country-specific or server-specific requirements from the POS itself.

EFTLink comes in two parts:

  • The EFTLink Framework

  • EFTLink Cores

The EFTLink Framework provides a system-independent execution environment (a framework) for a targeted EFT solution. The EFTLink Core for a specific terminal or payment system is implemented as a plug-in module that runs within that framework.

Oracle can provide cores for many of the most used card readers or PEDs. Cores can also readily be written for any other card readers or PEDs that require them. Once a core is available for a specific device it will normally work on a range of POSs without further modification.

Examples of where EFTLink is used include:

  • Payment, Refund, Reversal, Pre-authorization and Completion.

  • Loyalty Award and Redemption, Balance inquiry, Discount voucher/coupon, IOUs.

  • Stored Value Cards – Load, Redeem, Balance inquiry, Activate and so on.

  • Online Agents – E-top-up and utilities payments.

  • Tokenization, Gratuity, Cashback, DCC, Ad-hoc card read.

  • Combined Payment and POS receipts.

  • Maintenance functions.

  • EPS/PED pooling.