Payment failed due to eWAY connection issues

I'm running Commerce Kickstart 7.x-2.21 with Drupal 7.36 (tried upgrading but too many bugs) on a VPS, CentOS linux 6.0, Apache, PHP 5.3.3. I installed and enabled the eway_integration-7.x-1.2 module and attempted to test my Commerce Kickstart 2 checkout with my eWAY sandbox. I go through the checkout process and fill in the CC details on the Review pane. All good until I click 'continue to next step' and then I get this error - 'Payment failed due to eWAY connection issues'. I checked the module's code (eway_integration_commerce_module) and found the function where the error gets thrown. It starts at line 45:

function eway_integration_commerce_transaction($method_id = '', $payment_method, $payment, $configs, $order, $charge) {
if (empty($method_id)) {
return FALSE;
}

// Submit the request to eWAY.
$response = eway_integration_commerce_api_request($payment, $configs, $payment_method, $order);

$transaction = commerce_payment_transaction_new($method_id, $order->order_id);
$transaction->instance_id = $payment_method['instance_id'];
$transaction->amount = $charge['amount'];
$transaction->currency_code = $charge['currency_code'];
$transaction->remote_id = (string) isset($response->TransactionID) ? $response->TransactionID : '';
$transaction->remote_status = (string) isset($response->ResponseCode) ? $response->ResponseCode : '';
$transaction->payload = print_r($response, TRUE);

if ($response && isset($response->status)) {
if ($response->TransactionStatus) {
$message = t('Payment Successful : ') . implode(",", $response->status);
$transaction->status = COMMERCE_PAYMENT_STATUS_SUCCESS;
}
else {
$message = t('Payment failed: ') . implode(",", $response->status);
drupal_set_message($message, 'error');
$transaction->status = COMMERCE_PAYMENT_STATUS_FAILURE;
}
}
else {
$message = t('Payment failed due to eWAY connection issues');
if (isset($response->ErrorPhases)) {
$message = $message . ' - ' . implode(",", $response->ErrorPhases);
}
drupal_set_message($message, 'error');
$transaction->status = COMMERCE_PAYMENT_STATUS_FAILURE;
}

$transaction->message = $message;
commerce_payment_transaction_save($transaction);
return $transaction;
}

The process does not move on to the next step 'Checkout complete' pane but stays in 'Review'. On my MYeWAY page, I can see that eWAY is recieving the request and the transaction result shows 'successful.' All good on that end, and I've checked with the support staff who have confirmed that the problem is not with them. eWAY also sends back the payload and other info. But here's what I get:

Transaction ID 288
Order 6
Payment method eWAY Direct Connection
Remote ID -
Message Payment failed due to eWAY connection issues
Amount $24.95 AUD
Status Failure
Remote status
Created 18 May, 2015 - 12:34
Payload

{"AuthorisationCode":"1111111","ResponseCode":"00","ResponseMessage":"A2000","TransactionID":11558088,"TransactionStatus":true,"TransactionType":"Purchase","BeagleScore":0,"Verification":{"CVN":0,"Address":0,"Email":0,"Mobile":0,"Phone":0},"Customer":{"CardDetails":{"Number":"444433XXXXXX1111","Name":"myfirstname mylastname","ExpiryMonth":"05","ExpiryYear":"16","StartMonth":null,"StartYear":null,"IssueNumber":null},"TokenCustomerID":null,"Reference":"1","Title":"Mr.","FirstName":"myfirstname","LastName":"mylastname","CompanyName":"","JobDescription":"","Street1":"10 Foo Street","Street2":"","City":"Foo City","State":"NSW","PostalCode":"2000","Country":"au","Email":"webmaster@mydomain.com.au","Phone":"","Mobile":"","Comments":"1x 9781611800920","Fax":"","Url":""},"Payment":{"TotalAmount":2495,"InvoiceNumber":"6","InvoiceDescription":"","InvoiceReference":"6","CurrencyCode":"AUD"},"Errors":null}

See attached images for more info.

There is nothing revealing in watchdog and no errors on my server logs to throw any light on this problem.
Am I missing something really obvious here? This is my first ecommerce site.

Much appreciate any feedback.