State Lottery E-commerce Lottery Site

Most of this is from a press release, namblers, but it's a very interesting site and maybe a lot of lottery executive types may find it interesting to see how a State lottery operation can be marketed online.

Australian company Digital Prosperity Pty. Ltd. has a winning prospect for lottery players: the Luck-e-Lotto shop on the Internet). Players can get their Oz Lotto, Powerball and Tattslotto games online from a Tattersall's electronic accredited retail agent at http://www.luck-e-lotto.com.au with a choice of payment options.

It took Digital Prosperity's founding director and former geologist, Charlie Perity, more than a year to negotiate the exclusive contract with Tattersall's in Melbourne, and the better part of two years to design, fund and develop Australia's first fully automated online lottery shop.

But Perity says it was well worth it because the Luck-e-Lotto system has been operating successfully since commercial operation started last December.

While most Australian businesses are still trying to get a grip on e-commerce, Digital Prosperity is embracing it for all its worth. The in-house developed system offers registered players secure credit card transactions. If someone is still not convinced of the full strength 128-bit SSL encryption capability, then the player also has the option of using BPAY (to make direct debit payments via either telephone banking or Internet banking). BPAY is a national bill payment service jointly developed by the Australian banks and introduced last November.

Perity said, "We are proud to be the first Internet merchant to offer BPAY as an alternate payment option to Internet customers. This is a very important step since this provides an e-commerce solution to alleviate the general public's fear of using credit cards over the Internet."

The method of Luck-e-Lotto operation, which is consistent with proposed government guidelines, allocates a secure client account to each registered player from which cleared funds are used to pay for all purchases. Prizes are automatically credited to the winners' online accounts and the clients can deposit and withdraw funds online from this holding account or "electronic wallet", as some web sites may call it.

Clients can deposit funds by either credit card or BPAY, and also withdraw funds either by having a cheque mailed to their address or by an electronic funds transfer directly into their bank account. Clients initiate the BPAY deposits offline and Digital Prosperity receives the payment details electronically and credits the proceeds to the respective Luck-e-Lotto client accounts the following morning.

Every step of the deposit and withdrawal processes on Digital Prosperity's system is automated. The processing system interfaces via a direct link to Tattersall's system and to several Commonwealth Bank online systems including Diamond Services, Micro Merchant and BPAY.

Among the list of Luck-e-Lotto services provided is the new Auto-Play feature which takes e-commerce a step further. Auto-Play is a service enabled by the client that automatically submits the player's previously saved games and numbers week after week until the client decides to stop it.

Furthermore, an Auto-Play option called Auto-Deposit will automatically process a credit card transaction weekly to deposit the required funds. Of course, this requires that the client returns a signed "Credit Card Debit Authority" to activate Auto-Deposit.

Perity said, "Auto-Play is the ultimate convenience for lottery players because once it is activated, the service keeps on playing for the client while all they to do is check their weekly e-mailed receipts and prize notifications. Auto-Play does all the work and the lottery player never misses a draw and never has to lift a finger. I believe this is the killer application of online lottery services."

For the moment, only Australian Citizens in certain states are supposed to play using this site, but there is a little section of the registration form that says "Australians living overseas are welcome to register, provided they select an Australian jurisdiction on the registration form." So if you're that keen to play down under, you almost feel Australian. Just say G'day and log on and pick a jurisdiction. As all the activity is online and the site has a strict privacy policy, there would be no need for the real world address in practical terms.