THE Canal Walk Shopping Centre in Cape Town has implemented a networking infrastructure that reduces the cost of credit card transactions for its tenants.

Canal Walk's network also provides realtime account verification for its retailers. With no delay in credit card transactions, retailers will be able to know immediately whether a customer has enough funds to complete a transaction.

Since the implementation of the EFT switch system at the centre, no fraudulent or unfunded credit card transactions have been reported.

Using the system provided by TradeRoot Technologies, traders in the centre pay 2,5%-3% to banks for each credit card transaction. This is down from the 7%-8% that smaller retailers normally pay and the 5% paid by larger retailers.

TradeRoot spokesman Fred de Villiers says the centre's retailers get these savings as they do not incur the networking infrastructure cost; they cover only the cost of their own hardware.

Canal Walk laid out 600km of fibre-optic cable for retailers to connect to the centre's service provider, which in turn was connected to BoE Bank's point-of-sale department. BoE and Nedcor Bank are the institutions that verify whether a transaction can be completed, irrespective of which bank issued the credit card.

Retailers using the system can now authorise electronic transactions within five seconds and have no limit on a transaction amount.

TradeRoot said that with authorisation taking only 3,41 seconds on average, the added security did not delay the checkout process.

The system also benefited BoE and Nedcor as their processes had been streamlined and their transaction cost and risk had been reduced.

The next development would be connecting the system to the centre's office park, theme park and residences.