EMerchants cards have given Grant Kleidon an extra work day each week. Previously, the director of Contour Constructions had to use up much of every Friday on his wages run which could take him from the Tweed to the Sunshine Coast. Contour Constructions employs a large number of staff and sub-contractors.

The boys have to get paid on Fridays, and normal electronic transfers used to take up to three days – which was no good for those guys who needed the money each Friday,” says Grant.

Until recently, all these staff had to be paid by cheque, and Grant or one of his supervisors would spend hours delivering pay packets to sites around South East Queensland.

Initially, he saw the EMerchants card as a solution for another problem. Because Contour’s jobs take its crews all over South East Queensland, staff often found themselves far from a hardware supplier with which the firm has an account. So when they needed supplies, they were forced to use their personal credit cards, triggering unnecessary paperwork for re-imbursement.

Grant had considered a purchasing card for Contour Constructions, but was instantly put off by fees and charges attached to the major offerings from financial institutions. An EMerchants card, in contrast, was cheap and easy, and soon at least one person on each site had a card which they could use for supplies, fuel and other onsite expenses.

The real savings and efficiency, however, have been realised over the past four months, as the EMerchants Payload system was implemented. Besides improved efficiency, the card system has delivered significant savings on bank fees, with Contour paying a nominal fee per card each year and the staff paying modest transaction fees when they use their cards at ATMs or at EFTPOS terminals. And with some of the basic transactions covered, Grant continues to find new uses for the payment system. “We’ve started using the cards for staff bonuses – and it’s just so easy to load say $200 onto all the cards in one hit,” he says.

The system has also significantly reduced the administrative burden, with Contour able to pull a range of reports off the secure Internet site, allowing for quick and easy reconciliation.

And a final unexpected benefit is that Contour’s payroll card works as a mini-billboard. Emblazoned with the Contour logo, Grant says the cards work like an advertisement every time a staff member goes shopping. And now that he has his Fridays back, he can even make the most of the extra interest in his company.

Bowler Geotechnical

Bowler Geotechnical, a 15-year old professional firm with operations across 16 offices in three Australian states and two overseas countries, recently dumped its Shell cards in a trial of the Brisbane-developed stored-value solution. For director Brett Colman, rising fuel prices were the major impetus for Bowler Geotechnical’s change.

“We were bound to Shell which was not one of the cheaper suppliers when the discounting started,” he says.

“When fuel prices started sky-rocketing, we wanted to enable our staff to shop for the best price – and the most convenient servo when they’re on the road,” he recalls.

While Bowler wanted the flexibility to “shop around”, Colman certainly didn’t want to get back into manual expense re-imbursement or a complex fleet card arrangement. He considered various credit card solutions, but was put off by the high costs, the liability issues and the application process. Bowler Geotechnical saw immediate benefits from the EMerchants stored-value expense card solution.

The company has been trialing EMerchants’ CashCow card and looks set to adopt the solution in both of its Brisbane offices before rolling out to the rest of its operations.

The CashCow card, according to EMerchants’ founder and managing director Tony Ferguson, is finding strong support among businesses because it allows the convenience of a stored-value card and the ability to centrally manage the balances and disbursements to each fleet card.

Bowler has elected to limit the card to fuel purchases, turning off other merchants and ATM access. But should the company’s needs change, it’s easy to “turn these options on again”, enabling staff to use the cards for additional purchases or on-the-road cash needs.

“And unlike a credit or purchasing card, the staff can’t spend any more than the value stored on the cards,”
he says.

Staff at Bowler have welcomed the cards, says Colman, and the new freedom of choice has sparked competition to see who can buy the cheapest fuel. It’s not unusual, he says, for staff to use their Coles or Woolworths discount vouchers when they’re filling up the company cars.

Bowler drivers are also finding the system more convenient, especially on long trips like Brisbane to Mt Isa, where they can refill when they need to, rather than search for a Shell servo.

Cash Doctors

CashCow cards are playing an even bigger role at the Southport-based Cash Doctors, a payday loans and cheque cashing business.

Director Ron McDiarmid says the EMerchants card has been a central
pillar of the business since it opened earlier this year.

“As part of our service, we provide a CashCow card to every new customer,” he explains.

Cash Doctors lends money against cheques or future pay packets,
and generally, borrowers need the funds instantly. McDiarmid says without the EMerchants cards, it would be almost impossible to meet these requirements without either keeping large sums of cash on the premises or maintaining accounts at all the banks so that funds could be transferred to borrowers. Using CashCow, Cash Doctors maintains a “parent account” from which it can make instant transfers to customers’
CashCow cards.

“We have our own CashCow card and we transfer money from our bank account onto that card and load our customers’ cards from that – as a card-to-card transfer,” he says.

Unlike cumbersome bank-to-bank transfers, the EMerchants card-to-card transfer is instantaneous, he stresses.

“This solution saves Cash Doctors from having to collate bank account details for each and every customer,” says EMerchants’ Ferguson.

Instant transfers are the main benefit for Cash Doctors, but McDiarmid also stresses the ease of administration, with all loans and payments listed in a single account.

“From the customer’s point of view, the cards offer everything they’d want from a bank card,” he adds. “They can use it at ATMs or EFTPOS and they can transfer funds online”. However, there are additional benefits, such as the ability to draw any sum from ATMs, unlike many bank accounts which impose daily limits.

McDiarmid is so taken with EMerchants cards that he’s planning to sell them to non-loan customers as a substitute for cash or credit cards. He sees significant potential among businesses, where CashCow is an easy-to-use and easy-to-administer expense solution. He sees CashCow as a central platform to his own business and will use the cards at the five branches planned for opening in the next 12 months.

To further cement the relationship, McDiarmid expects to soon unveil a Cash Doctors-branded EMerchants card which will add to his brand development in a competitive market.