We confess we are a neighbour of Oncard. It helps to be able to duck next door to grasp another piece of the jig-saw which, it tuns out, is as simpler business than it seems at first sight.

Oncard deals in cash and like Scrooge McDuck is dedicated to the stuff. It has $15m in the bank which covers listing fees and the salary and travel of a small Australian management team, but the rest of the company is off-stage in Asia, principally China where 400 or so employees in 100% owned companies or joint ventures promote the concept of convenient, secure, fraud-free payment technology.. Who uses it? At this point about 7000 organisations which either want to reward employees with a tax free component of salary, or track spending with reward and loyalty points or who simply want to use a debit card as a promotional tool. In Singapore Oncard manages a diners cards.. In New Zealand it operates a popular fuel card..

Intersting perhaps, but there are plenty of cards operators around like American Express and Diners. There are, but they have focussed on selling debt, not on facilitating payments. They are the mirror image of a debit operation which earns lower interest, but rather than advance capital, they receive it until drawn down.

After two and a half years the business is gathering pace. It has 16 million cards on issue, well up on last year's 8 million.  Income comes from the merchant fee, the interest on the total pool of funds advanced on trust to Oncard (now "over" $100m*) and from part of the unspent residual on the cards.

Perhaps the most significant aspect is an agreement with a subsidiary of the Bank of China, Beijing All-Payments. Surprising as it may seem, the central bank has sought Oncard's expertise to assist in the roll out of a national on-line payments system. China does have cheques, but is basically leap-frogging this expensive, risk prone method of organising bearer payments. After all, cash or debit cards are an electronic form of bearer cheques, but with an inbult electronic clearance. It takes a moment to absorb the significance of this step. China's commercial presence will percolate through Asia. Guiding aspects of this will be Oncard's Executive Chairman's with the experience of twenty five years in the electronic payments division of ANZ, a facility for languages and an upbeat personality.

As a package Oncard passes our cred test in several respects. It has some well known names on the registry, it has no debt; cash representing three fifths of its market cap; and it is doing business in high growth, high savings economies. In all of them wads of cash are still the basic payment system. In time it will be largely electronic.

* We've tackled Peter Abotomey a few times about what "over" means. The answer is always the same: "It means over"