Aleksandar Antunović: Antecna and online payment

Write: Aleksandar Antunović, CEO Antecna

This December, we are missing usual Christmas and New Year's Eve images of huge crowds of people who are eagerly waiting to buy gifts for their loved ones. Still, there will be a lot of presents under the Christmas trees, even more than in previous years because Santa Clause's main assistants this year are different e-commerce solutions, ramping up development significantly in 2020.

When you open your present under the Christmas tree, chosen in the web shop, paid by credit card over some of your trustworthy platforms, know you got it thanks to an army of software engineers who made it possible. We are proud that “Antecna” is being part of this global force with solutions that contribute to a good experience of online market.

The facts are undeniable. In 2020, electronic payments have been recording the strong growth worldwide, and this trend has not bypassed the Balkan region either. The phenomenon of the corona virus has certainly contributed to this but we should not overlooked the fact that electronic payment allows us to save time and money at the same time.

What still brings a dose of skepticism among some people is how it all works, whether our personal data are exposed by this type of payment, whether our money remains secure and how these platforms work in general.

Antecna is a specialized software company which can give many answers in online payment sphere.

Virtual reality

E-shopping is ubiquitous all over the world with a presence in the Balkans for the last decade and keep growing rapidly. We are witnessing the great influence of technology giants from the US and Asia, companies valued trillions of dollars that contribute to the virtual world growth- elevate its significance in everyday life.

Let's just recall Spielberg's film ''Ready Player One'', set in 2045, much of humanity uses the virtual reality software to escape the real world. Only this virtual world and achievements there are important, the real world is irrelevant.

Although we think it is the future, suddenly we realize elements of this trend in the world we live today, with the expansion of this trend among the younger generation. Teenagers buy, as birthday present for their friends, sweatshirts or backpacks for virtual characters in their favourite online game paying for it by their parents' credit card, approximately 10-20 euros. It used to be inconceivable until recently but now it is everyday occurrence also in Banjaluka, Doboj, Trebinje, Belgrade, Nis, Kraljevo...

Going to your favourite clothing store is an one-off, your measurements are taken in-store only once and afterward buy everything online based on your personalized 3D figure.

A mixture of youth and experience

Antecna is a specialized software company of 20+ engineers with years of experience in technologies used for making payment platforms at the market in the region and abroad. Our business analysts and software engineers have designed, developed and implemented a number of different eCommerce solutions.

We are pleased to see that currently, over the platforms developed by Antecna’s engineers, hundreds of thousands of transactions are processed per month, worth hundreds of thousands of euros with an exponential growth.

In 2019, eCommerce in the USA weighted 9$ trillion. The eCommerce traffic growth estimation is 20% a year globally, in the period 2019-2027 evaluated before the Covid19 pandemic.

In Serbia, the turnover in the category of Internet trade for 2019 fetched up to 328 million euros, with a similar growth rate as in the world, even higher.

Despite the omnipresence of online stores, distrust about security is immense and in our regions is even greater.

With the systematic development of legal solution that regulate Internet commerce, raising the awareness of the general public about Internet technologies the share of eCommerce in BDP will grow significantly- it is about 0.7% in Serbia currently.

Areas of implementation

Online shoppers are indulged in eCommerce by plenty od web shops over Internet so therefore Antecna receives a lot of RFQs at the moment. But we are developing a way more complex systems that interconnect large databases with artificial intelligence and business analytics tools using the experience our engineers acquired through numerous IT/software projects.

We have developed an online payment system for insurance companies, one of them has been implemented in Wiener Insurance.

We have created and implemented a platform for online toll collection on highways and our system is used in Serbia, a network of highways managed by Public Enterprise Roads of Serbia, with a tendency to be interoperable and expand to the region - ENPay application.

Posts of Srpska recognized the potential of ‘Antecna’ in the process of digitalization of their services and the use of online payment benefits.

We are especially proud to bring together user experience of different platforms in telco industry- IPTV streaming technology, Mobile and Enterprise applications- where we have developed an integrated online payment platform. Users can pay over the platform for services via TV, mobile phone and PC. The implementation of such a solution is in the final phase for one of the three national Telekom Providers in BiH and the service will soon be available to users.

We have developed a ‘Fastable’ platform for online booking in restaurants, we have an implementation in Lagos, Nigeria.

The projects aforementioned are solutions which are in production or in the final phase of testing, but many more are being cooked in Antecna’s kitchen – we will cover these topics in future blogs, so be sure to follow us 😊😊😊

Since a few days separate us from the end of 2020, I would take this opportunity to thank Antecna employees for their passion, dedication and creative energy in bringing such, I would emphasize, unique solutions to light, enable digital transformation and online payments for different users in the region- Happy New Year to our blog readers.