Standardisation of prepayment systems in South Africa, 1993-1996. A systems approach

The introduction of pre-payment metering to South Africa, in 1989, was driven by social needs and political and economic pressures. The initial focus was on the pre-paid meter as this was seen to be the crucial element in automatic credit control. Pre-paid metering was the natural choice as it was perceived to be the technical solution to ensuring payment. Also, the equipment to vend the tokens had to be stand alone (off-line) and the initial approach adopted was one where many small independent single-computer systems were introduced. Experience 6 years later has shown that with a million pre-payment meters installed nationally, Eskom has found it essential to implement a national system to manage the customer database and sales of tokens. The authors discuss the initial problems of implementing pre-payment metering and the systems approach taken to solve them. Standardisation of the Standard Transfer Specification (POS terminal interface) is also discussed