Max eCommerce has developed and maintained the Superconnect on-line superannuation payments and contribution service since its inception in 1996. In mid 2003, AAPT Ltd, the owners of Superconnect, decided to exit the superannuation transaction market and offered the Superconnect business to Max eCommerce. Since then, EC-Pay Pty Ltd trading as Superconnect has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Max eCommerce.

Superconnect offers a range of highly successful online solutions for the Superannuation industry for both employers and fund administrators. Included are

• the many employer to one fund Superconnect service.
• the many employer to many super fund Superconnect Clearing House service (Choice) and
• a large employer solution, MultiSuper (Choice)

Superannuation Clearing House - Choice of Fund Case Study

Superannuation Clearing House for Australia

Now there is an easier way to make superannuation contributions. With MYOB M-Powered® superannuation, you can send all superannuation contributions to your employees' funds using your MYOB software.

You can check at any time that the correct payments have been prepared and when you are satisfied that the superannuation contributions are correct, you simply enter your authoriser password and submit your contributions. There's less paperwork, it's faster and you're in control.

Solution

Max eCommerce believed a solution based on XML messaging between MYOB and Max eCommerce's clearing house, Max eSuperCollect, would offer the best solution to meet MYOB's requirements. MYOB would act as the provider or aggregator and forward the relevant data to SuperCollect for clearing.

SuperCollect developed in Microsoft's. NET environment, is a robust transaction based clearing house for the payment of superannuation from many employers to many superannuation funds.

SuperCollect is responsible for all interactions between the superannuation funds and MYOB. MYOB is responsible for all interactions between MYOB and its customers.

Max eCommerce maintains and administers the SuperCollect service. Key responsibilities of Max eCommerce include:

• Maintenance of the Fund List, which is sent to MYOB whenever a change has been made;
• Providing Customer Support services to superannuation funds in receipt of payments and contributions received from SuperCollect;
• Marketing the electronic contribution service to superannuation funds;
• Ensuring that payment files are sent electronically to the bank everyday;

Background

MYOB, Australia's largest supplier of desktop accounting software to small and medium sized enterprises, initiated a requirement to provide a new service to its customers to enable them to make payments to multiple superannuation funds for all their employees in a simple and timely manner.

MYOB had no expertise in the superannuation industry. An important consideration for MYOB was to partner with an expert, trusted and independent third party to operate a service, which would ensure that data and payments were received by multiple superannuation funds.

After an extensive evaluation of potential partners, MYOB elected to partner with Superconnect – a wholly owned subsidiary of Max eCommerce – and supplier of the Superconnect on-line superannuation hub service.

Requirements

MYOB's broad requirements for its service, MYOB M-Powered superannuation, included:

• A focus on providing the SME employer with the simplest possible experience for passing superannuation contributions;
• Authenticated secure transactions between MYOB and Max eCommerce;
• Application acknowledgement of all received messages;
• Full track and trace of all messages received and sent;
• Batched payment files;
• XML messages;
• Electronic communications from the customer desktop through to the superannuation fund;
• Matching of payments and contribution data;
• Direct debit capability;
• Easy to use Customer Support capabilities
• A many-to-many employer to fund capability
• Full clearing house capabilities including the delivery of data and payments via electronic or paper methods
• Fully scalable architecture for growth
• Robust process to ensure that the correct money was provided to the correct fund.
• Ability to have a relationship with over 400 superannuation funds.

How it works

SuperCollect sends a Funds' List, in XML format, to MYOB's M-Powered superannuation service when changes have been made to the fund database.

SuperCollect receives employer registration messages from MYOB in a real-time manner. Once an employer is registered on the service, SuperCollect receives employee contribution messages instructing SuperCollect to debit the employer's bank account and to pay to the nominated funds' the superannuation contributions for the nominated employees.

SuperCollect automatically validates all messages received before processing them. Where a message is not validated, an error is generated and sent to MYOB. Where a message is validated, the message is placed in the queue for further processing.

All contributions are processed on a daily basis with a payment instruction sent to the bank each afternoon. This payment instruction debits employers' bank accounts and credits a MYOB holding account.

Once the funds are deemed to be cleared, a second payment instruction is sent to the bank, normally three days after the first payment instruction has been sent. This second payment instruction debits the holding account and credits the superannuation funds' bank accounts, or credits a cheque account where a fund is not electronically enabled.

Should any employer payment be returned by the bank, the bank sends a notification to SuperCollect, which generates and sends an error message to MYOB.

Immediately the second payment instruction file is sent to the bank, Max eSuperCollect generates a contribution advice and makes this available for the superannuation fund to collect or download. An advisory email is forwarded to the fund at the same time.

Results

SuperCollect is a robust, stable, 24x7 clearing house service, which eases the administrative burden on SME business and superannuation funds and brings a low cost "choice of fund" environment to employers.

SuperCollect demonstrated its reliability by processing a record number of payments on June 30 2004.

Over 50 funds are electronically connected to SuperCollect including some of Australia's largest superannuation funds.

Over 300 funds are receiving payments and contributions from the Max eSuperCollect service.

MYOB

MYOB Australia's Chris Knight is delighted with the SuperCollect service. "SuperCollect is a key component of MYOB's M-Powered superannuation service," he said. "We are delighted with the way in which SuperCollect takes files from many employers for many superannuation funds and ensures that the correct money is sent to the correct fund for the correct employee."

"The response from our customers has been very positive to the new clearing house service", Mr Knight said.

Payment Gateways

Tradegate Payments

Electronic payments for the International Trade and Transport Community

Tradegate is the Peak User Association for Electronic Commerce in Australia.

Tradegate ECA is a unique organisation. It is a not-for-profit, non-government, user organisation, headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Its foremost role is to facilitate the use of electronic commerce techniques for the exchange of information between customers and their suppliers. It does this by bringing together all of the different types of organisations involved in each supply chain so that a common agreed strategy can be developed and implemented using the relevant international standards.

Paynet is convenient, secure payments system that integrates with all the TradeGate services at TradeGate.com.au. The ImportNet user community is the first to benefit from TradeGate Payments enabling registered users to electronically remit payments to other parties including maritime transport providers (shipping lines, brokers and forwarders). Users can receive and create electronic invoices allowing seamless automatic updates and Transactions with another TradeGate user irrespective of whether they use the TradeGate Payments web forms or their own back office systems and applications. TradeGate Payments is a generic process, which can be used for just about any electronic payment purpose between businesses.

Paynet Bureau Service is an integrated payment gateway facility. It facilitates the automatic release of Import Delivery Orders from Australian Customs in conjunction with Tradegate ImportNet. It interfaces with the Australian banking network.

It provides for complete purchase order, remittance advice messaging based on the relevant UNEDIFACT EDI standards and comprehensive reporting facility.