Following the growing challenges facing Bill Express / Dialtime and their apparent loss of Optus recharge product from their platform, we have been inundated with calls about when / if we will get Optus and Vodafone recharge on eziPass.
There is no doubt that the more newsagents registered for eziPass the stronger our pitch to these two vendors. With 300 products live already on eziPass we have a strong offer. We will add to that prepaid Visa product soon which will be competitive with BOPO. We will announce more on that in the next few days. The contracts are signed. We are going through technical testing of the link.
But back to Optus and Vodafone. We are working on this and have been for weeks.  We are not sure if the difficulties for Bill Express make it easier or harder. While it sounds cliche, watch this space.
I am flying to Hong Kong late tonight but will continue to work on this from there.
I would imagine having the trouble that it is rumoured with billexpress not paying, companies like Optus and Vodaphone will be reluctant to get burnt again.
Optus would also have to be fairly disappointed that Newsagents were not more enthusiastic about selling phones and getting a better commission. Selling phones builds customer loyalty for recharge, but many newagents would not take the risk of putting $100 phones in their shops. I know there are some go getters out there, but many newsagents stand behind the counter waiting for the business to come to them.