United Kingdom payments company Worldpay has entered the Australian market, offering a fully integrated service that includes a payment gateway, merchant acquiring, access to alternative payment services and risk management.The company has secured access to the Visa and MasterCard systems to process payments in the local market.It is only the second specialist merchant acquirer to operate in the Australian market. The big banks dominate in this area and until yesterday their only independent competitor was tyro.Worldpay chief product and marketing officer Kevin Dallas said the company's focus would be different to tyro's."Our focus will be on multi-national merchants with complex payment needs. We are offering a multi-country solution," Dallas said.Companies that have already signed with Worldpay for payment processing in Australia include online fashion retailer ASOS, Cathay Pacific and Freelancer.Dallas said Worldpay would not offer point of sale payment services, although it does offer POS services in the UK and the United States.Worldpay was part of Royal Bank of Scotland until 2010, when it was sold to private equity investors Bain Capital and Advent International. It listed on the London Stock Exchange last October.The company claims to be the biggest payments processor in Europe and one of the biggest outside the United States.Dallas said the company's point of difference was its level of integration."In most cases businesses play a role as gateway services, acquirers or alternative payment services. We are end to end," he said.Its system offers access to 300 payment types, including PayPal, AliPay and other alternative services.The other point of difference in the Australian context will be the focus on a "multi-country solution.""Australia has a vibrant ecommerce market with international reach. We will offer an international solution," Dallas said.Worldpay is taking advantage of changes to the payments access regime that were introduced last year, which opened the door for a range of new entrants. On January 1 last year the Reserve Bank varied the access regimes for the MasterCard and Visa credit card systems and revoked the access regime for the Visa debit system.The RBA also abolished the ADI category of specialist credit card institution.The combined effect of the old access regimes and the SCCI rule was that only authorised deposit-taking institutions were eligible to join the MasterCard and Visa systems.These changes have opened up the market but until yesterday they had not had much impact.