Simon Warner, Centricom CEO said it is not a direct debit process but a secured debit payment in real time.

Warner said the process works almost like an online bank check a merchant can receive with the same guarantees, with consumers controlling the entire transaction.

"POLi provides a fully authenticated transaction and is a commercial solution for consumers who don't use credit cards ... we are not trying to compete with credit cards, just enable merchants to give a level of choice," Warner said.

"Consumers choose which bank they bank with and the only piece of information Centricom uses is the BSB number and amount into the transaction fields."

The system uses 168 bit triple DES encryption.