Pay@ Leads Year-End Collections With Auto Reconciliation

Few stretches on the South African billing calendar are as demanding as the run from late November to the end of January. Accounts get settled before people leave on holiday, festive spending has to be paid for, and the new year brings another wave of school fees, insurance premiums, municipal charges and subscription renewals. Each of those payments needs to land against the correct customer account. This November, Pay@, the Stellenbosch-based payments company behind bill payments since 2007, is shining a light on the collections task that tends to create the most pressure out of sight: reconciliation.

With money flowing in through numerous channels at the same time, finance staff can lose days trying to link each payment to its account. Pay@ is designed to take much of that effort away, checking payments in real time and reporting them back in a format that lines up with the biller's own records.

The cost of unmatched payments at peak time

An unmatched payment causes trouble for everyone involved. The customer thinks the account is paid, yet the biller is looking at an outstanding balance alongside an unexplained deposit. During a slow month, staff can untangle these cases manually. At peak times, they build up fast, holding back confirmations, triggering queries and keeping people away from customer service.

Across its whole payment network, Pay@ reports a reconciliation matching rate of 99.995%. That number comes down to design. Every customer pays with a unique Pay@ reference number, and when a payment is made to a valid account number it is verified, the amount is validated and notifications go out immediately. Billers can therefore see who has paid, and how much, as the money arrives.

Choosing an integration route

Pay@ works as a payment solutions provider with two integration options for billers, so they can pick the one that fits their systems.

Option one is the Online API. Pay@ sends real-time validation and payment notifications to an endpoint supplied by the business. As soon as a customer pays, the payment is matched to a valid account number, the amount is validated and the biller receives notification right away.

Option two is integration by file. The biller supplies Pay@ with account numbers, customer details and amounts payable. Pay@ validates payments locally and then delivers a reconciliation file of payments received, either at the end of each day or at an agreed interval. Billers whose systems run in batches, rather than in real time, tend to favour this approach.

Smaller businesses have a further choice: a self-service solution in which invoices are generated and payments handled through a dedicated payment portal. This option is intended for businesses handling up to about 10,000 transactions per month, whereas the enterprise integration caters for anything from 10,000 to over 100,000 transactions per month.

Meeting customers in their preferred format

Getting paid begins with the bill, not the payment. Through Pay@'s gateway, billers can present bills in many formats, among them printed invoices, PDF, SMS, QR codes, payment links, in-app, web-based and USSD. Pay@'s support systems handle the entire transaction, covering bill presentment, real-time bill validation, payment confirmation and daily reporting.

That range is especially useful during the holidays, when customers may be travelling, away from home or using only their phone. Paying on the go is simpler when the bill comes as an SMS containing a payment link, or as a QR code ready to scan.

Many payment options through a single integration

Billers that connect to Pay@ gain access to over 40 payment networks spanning retail, banking and digital partners. Customers can pay in person at a wide retail footprint, or online via banking apps, mobile network operators and other digital payment providers. Cash, card, EFT and mobile money are all accepted, and billers get a single settlement covering every payment.

On the digital side, Pay@ has partnered with Capitec so that its customers can pay online in the banking app using just their registered cell number, with no need to share banking details. Pay@ has also collaborated with the City of Cape Town on PayThat, which makes paying traffic fines safer and faster.

Billers looking for payment solutions capable of reaching customers from every population group will find this mix of physical and digital points of sale at the heart of what Pay@ provides. The company calls its offering the largest payment network in the region across both physical and digital points of sale.

Simple pricing

There are no setup fees and no recurring subscription fees for Pay@'s integrated solution. Billers are charged a per transaction fee and nothing else. That makes it easy for a business deciding whether to open new payment channels ahead of a busy season, because cost tracks usage. A biller with a December surge and a slower February simply pays for the volume it actually processes, instead of funding fixed monthly capacity it will not always use.

Nearly two decades of experience

Pay@ has been processing transactions across Southern Africa since 2007, including in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The company is an authorised financial services provider, FSP No 29423, and a certified Third Party Payment Provider. Insurers, financial services providers, broadcasters, municipalities and money transfer businesses are among its clients.

Pay@'s point to businesses seeking a reliable payment provider before the festive season and the new year is straightforward: collections are not finished the moment a customer pays. They are finished once that payment has been matched, confirmed and recorded, which is exactly where automated reconciliation proves its value.

Find out more at https://payat.co.za

About Pay@

Pay@ is a South African payments company that helps billers collect payments from their customers across retail, banking, mobile and digital channels. Established in 2007 and located at Suite 4, Old College Building, 35 Church Street, Stellenbosch, the company provides integrated and self-service collection solutions, a payment gateway for eCommerce stores and a white-labelled platform-as-a-service. Pay@ links billers to over 40 payment networks and processes transactions in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. It is an authorised financial services provider (FSP No 29423) and a certified Third Party Payment Provider.