INDIGENOUS oil marketer, Oando Marketing Limited (OML), a subsidiary of Oando Plc, has concluded plans to hit the nation's petroleum industry with a new electronic payment solution called "PAYDirect" for dealers come next month.

According to a news statement made available to The Guardian recently and signed by the Head, Corporate Communications of the company, Mr. Meka Olowola, said that from October 1st, this year, dealers in its retail service stations nationwide were expected to switch over to the new electronic device that was aimed at improving product supply chain management and boosting the efficiency of the company's retail outlets, thereby guaranteeing petroleum products availability across all Oando service stations nationwide.

Olowola said that the electronic payment service would be powered by InterSwitch, a service provider company.

PAYDirect is an on-line real time service targeted mainly at OML's cash paying dealers nationwide. Once introduced, PAYDirect will drastically reduce the time it takes to confirm payment for products from about 24 hours to a few minutes via instant notification of all payments into participating banks allowing for immediate shipping of products from any of OML's over 20 fuel and lubricant storage locations direct to the paying customer's site.

According to the press statement, the introduction of the "PAYDirect" solution further reinforced Oando's subsidiary- OML as one of the operationally efficient player in the downstream sector, having already successfully implemented the Oracle e-business Suite in 2007 as its core-operating platform.

The statement added that the solution would provide the dealers of Oando Marketing of faster processing and release of products to dealers as a result of immediate tracking of payments, online real-time accounts status and tracking of payments made anywhere across the country, availability of historical reports of transactions for easier reconciliation and elimination of bank confirmation for payments made to any of OML's accounts.

Commenting on the initiative, Oando's Chief Operating Officer, OML, Mr. Ayo Ajose-Adeogun, said: "As a customer-focused organisation, we continually reinvent our processes to ensure excellent service delivery to stakeholders. The PAYDirect solution offers OML a 24-hour reduction in the typical order-to-delivery cycle for all our products regardless of the delivery point. The immediate impact of this is the quick turnaround of our dealers' investment as well as a confidence boost for our numerous customers in the ability of our stations to meet their petroleum product demands all year round irrespective of geographical location.

"Once again, we are proud to pioneer this initiative in Nigeria, as we continue to maintain retail market leadership with innovative products and services," he said.