ACH-based payments specialist eWise has raised another round of funding for its Secure Vault Payment method, an approach that leverages the bank’s own security scheme. With the rise in interest in electronic checks, eWise is addressing an important problem. A C2B player – paying college tuition has been a popular application for its U.S. participants – eWise has to convince both financial institutions and merchants to accept its payment method, no small task that will require plenty of cash.
eWise develops a payments technology, called Secure Vault Payment, that allows users to automatically deduct a payment from their bank account without disclosing their personal information to online businesses. Payments are processed via a login and password to the bank’s site.
eWise expects that this payments technology could reach 400 million uses within 5 years. Clients include Citibank and First Direct (part of HSBC) in the UK, Ping An in China, Westpac in Australia and USBank in the U.S. The company plans to use the funding to expand further to the U.S. as well as for the development of a new mobile payments technology.
