Eftpos Australia's new chief executive Stephen Benton says he is not banking on the introduction of least-cost routing to secure the company's strategic future in the local payments market.Benton, a 20-year veteran of the local banking and payments industry, expects Eftpos to regain some transaction volume when merchants next year are handed the power to route contactless debit transactions to the cheapest processing network.With Eftpos' merchant fees now undercutting the average pricing of Mastercard and Visa by around 50 per cent, it's a fair bet that Benton's business will retrieve some of the transaction flows that were lost after the global schemes launched their contactless debit offerings.Notwithstanding, Benton insists Eftpos will have to transform the way it does business if it wants to thrive in a market undergoing profound transformation induced by advances in digital technology."We're confident we will get some volume from least cost routing but overall we don't want to rely on that as a new source of volume going forward," Benton told Banking Day."We are lower(on pricing) in most cases than our competitors but they may well respond to that - so, you never will be certain that you will always be lower."I think the better long-term approach is to understand the needs of your customers- whether it be the merchant, the cardholder or the issuer - and how you can support them to have a better relationship in the long term. "My philosophy is not just about providing payment technology but also providing good customer propositions. "I think that provides for a more efficient marketplace where you compete more than just on price."Benton says he is now engaging with the company's diverse customer base to grasp how Eftpos can deepen its proposition beyond an attractive price offer.A clear strategic priority is to diversify Eftpos as a payments business so that it becomes more than a point-of-sale product.Eftpos' failure to stake a position in the online shopping market has opened opportunities for new and established rivals to hack into its share of debit payments. "Today, Eftpos is not active in ecommerce," he said "That's an area where we have probably been a little bit late into the market. "We're actively developing solutions so our customers can shop online."Eftpos is developing a proprietary capability to service online shoppers who need to make payments to domestic merchants.While that will go part of the way to reviving the scheme's immediate growth prospects, Eftpos will still not be able to compete against the likes of  Pay Pal, Visa and Mastercard when Australians shop at websites based overseas.Benton says adding a global capability is something that the company will consider in the future."We've seen that happen in other markets where some of the domestic schemes have accessed other international networks such as Discover," he says."We think that's something that is viable for us to look at."We want to give our cardholders more reasons to use an Eftpos card and issuers more reasons to issue