Organizations who employ an electronic bill presentment and payment solution benefit in many ways. Here are a few of the most important reasons businesses choose to do so. Does your organization still rely on mailed-in or phoned-in payments? Let’s dive into the EBPP option of becoming more efficient

Reduced Labor Costs

It’s still commonplace for businesses and organizations to accept payments over the phone and by mail. Those methods require a lot of customer service time spent dealing with accepting those payments.

That time also amounts to benefits and time off, or at the least – scheduling issues trying to make sure there is enough staff to handle the anticipated workload. Moreover, businesses and organizations who bill or invoice on particular days of the month, e.g., the first and the fifteenth, are presented with switching employee duties or relying on outsourced  or temporary labor to facilitate those phone payments. Large organizations who accept payment by mail commonly use a dropbox service. Accepting lockbox payments is a tedious task. Envelopes must be opened, staples removed, checks separated and data entered – sometimes manually in the case of items not able to be read by OCR. The costs for those services can be quite expensive. The labor involved with utilizing Electronic Bill Presentment and Payments (EBPP) can be a fraction of these more laborious methods.

Security

Because lockbox payments acceptance is a tedious task, labor is sometimes outsourced – in some cases offshore. Offshore or not, human involvement in handling paper checks creates a security concern. It only takes one disgruntled employee or contractor that might harvest or self-use the checking account sensitive data for personal gain through fraudulent channels. Commonly, paper check via lockbox fraud is found in the form of counterfeit checks. The greater percentage of payments that or converted to EBPP, the less the risk factor becomes for fraudulent use of banking data. 

Systems Integration

Far and few between will you find a lockbox system that is integrated with an organization’s ERP software. More commonly you will find that your organization will receive a file of transaction data which is left to your back office to reconcile. A good EBPP system can both deliver a file, but also has the ability to deliver notifications in near real-time for settled or rejected items. Going a step further, an EBPP system has the ability to integrate your ERP and CRM system via API, eliminating the need for file upload. Using webhooks this data can be updated in near real-time.  Integration of invoice payments reporting data can significantly improve efficiencies of most all organizations.

Speed

The checks in the mail – we have all heard that. As it relates to mailed-in checks to a lockbox, it’s not the issue of relying on your customer mailing a payment in on time, it’s the amount of time that it actually takes the check to arrive by mail once it has been sent, then opened, processed, deposited and settled. That process takes time. Again, it’s a tedious process. Sure, using a lockbox vendor can be faster than checks mailed directly to your business, it’s still much, much slower than an EBPP system. Customers remitting payments by way of electronic bill presentment can be settled as quickly as the next day, with complete funds availability. 

Additional Payment Modals

These days you rarely see an invoice delivered by traditional mail with the ability for a customer to fill-in credit or debit card data. And for those organizations who still do so, consumers have a better understanding that the risk in sensitive data in traditional mail is more risk inherent than than if remitting over a secure EBPP system. They typically don’t fear the USPS in handling their remittance, but know that the data can be read and handled by who knows how many people outside the postal service. A good EBPP system will provide a PCI level 1 certified platform, protecting your organization and it’s customers from data theft.

Agile Payments has been working with organization of all sizes for 18+ years in meeting their needs for streamlining their receivable needs. Contact us to discuss your requirements.