eFunds has acquired the intellectual property of local Internet payment technology provider Webpay's products, as well as its CEO and five software development staff.

The acquisition deepens the Arizona-based vendor's electronic payments software and service portfolio by providing a "scalable, secure and authenticated Internet payment gateway for processing financial and non-financial messages," eFunds officials said.

Webpay's foundation product, Webpay Transaction Server, provides real-time control of merchant authorization and access. This lets merchants see the status of their accounts online and prevents Internet fraud by merchants or users.

eFunds' Asia-Pacific managing director Peter Lloyd said: "Webpay provides specialist payments expertise to complement our existing Connex and Oasis solutions."

Webpay's chief executive Aaron Bartrim said because eFunds' products give companies a secure framework for critical payments systems, the Webpay products and skills fit well into that environment.

eFunds already has an equity stake in Webpay, but has now brought on Webpay's CEO Bartrim as well as five key employees from the vendor who work in software development, Lloyd said. Bartrim will serve as eFunds' chief technical officer for Webpay products, a company spokesperson said.

eFunds wanted to acquire key intellectual assets within Webpay in order to help the company with some of its strategic architectural work, according to Lloyd.

"We'll utilise these new people to keep [their core] product going and on-train some of our own developer resources, as well as enable us to market ourself more to other geographies such as Europe, Middle East and Africa, and build on our presence in North America," he said.

Lloyd said on the product side, the acquisition changes the metrics associated with how Webpay's software is sold and licensed in that it is now eFunds' own product. He said Webpay itself continues to operate and provide Internet payment software development and services. eFunds' customers can expect a better level of service than they were getting, he added.

"We've now secured the technology for our customer base so we can support them with better implementation capability and we don't have to defer their requests for work or subcontract to Webpay."

eFunds has acquired Webpay's core products which consist of its payment gateway technology, a full software suite issued by Visa and the Identrus Transaction Coordinator, as well as inherited the company's Australian customers which include ANZ Bank, bTrusted and Global Point Systems.