EastLink enhances customer experience and credit card security for phone call payments

While most EastLink payments are made automatically or via the EastLink website, some customers continue to prefer to pay over the phone with a customer service operator.

Since May 2017, all automatic payments and website payments with EastLink have benefited from the tokenisation of credit and debit card details, with tokens provided securely by EastLink’s bank. This means that EastLink’s systems don’t store any card details.

However, EastLink payments made over the phone with a customer service operator have involved the customer telling the operator their card details, and the operator typing the card details into EastLink’s system to create a token.

There are some residual risks with this type of phone payment. For example, the customer could be in a public place when reading out the card details – they could be overheard and have their card details stolen.

To further enhance security and eliminate these residual risks, EastLink has made the following change to all payments made over the phone:

• Every payment over the phone now engages a new, secure system, which collects card details directly from the customer using phone keypad entry and receives a token from EastLink’s bank without any card details being stored on the new system.

• The EastLink customer service operator does not see or hear the card details.

• Even the tones generated when entering card details using the phone keypad are not heard by the EastLink customer service operator or recorded within call recordings.

• The customer service operator remains on the call with the customer throughout, to help resolve any payment difficulties and to assist with further service requests following the payment.

Bill Advic, EastLink’s General Manager, Information Technology said, “Customer experience and customer security remain top of mind for EastLink especially when it comes to credit and debit card payments.  This new system is a real game-changer for processing phone payments. It means we can provide a better, more secure and easy to use phone payment system for our customers.”