Secure Payment Solutions

Prepayment for energy has grown in popularity in recent years. Naturally this is of considerable benefit to suppliers, as their cash-flow improves dramatically. Consumers also benefit, as they are able to budget more effectively than with credit accounts where bills may arrive months after the energy has been consumed. Energy becomes a retail commodity when a prepayment solution is implemented

Our solution comprises Liberty meters for electricity and gas, used in conjunction with an encryption platform and a web-based client for managing payments and accounts. This can be used for prepayment or credit consumers.

Liberty meters, based on a robust technology platform, have integral switches or valves to disconnect supply on expiry of credit, or to limit load according to individual requirements. The encryption service generates a special vend code for each transaction and is accessed through a secure communication link over the Internet. A back-end database logs all the transactions and keeps track of the status of each consumer's account. The payment system supports multi-rate tariffs, changes of tenancy and can be used to recover debt by deducting a portion from each payment.

The system provides secure and unique vend codes based on triple-DES encryption technology. Each transaction code can be used only once and only on the Liberty meter for which it was generated. This eliminates the risk of financial loss to either the consumer or the energy supplier, in the event of a vend code being lost or stolen.