In an era of workforce shortages, organizations are looking at all their options to improve employee efficiency and productivity. For some, that means adding a payment platform that is compatible with your current workflow system. But it is important to ensure the payment platform has some key features to accelerate the payment process. Let’s look at a few of those.

Payments, payments, payments

Digital payments are commonplace. So much so that the total transaction value of digital payments in the United States is estimated to be $2.041 trillion in 2023. And the digital payments market in the U.S. is expected to reach $3.528 trillion by 2027.

While some expressed concern about the security of making payments online, those fears have clearly dissipated. A recent survey showed that 64% of U.S. consumers think paying online is secure. Another 65% reportedly prefer to use online methods to pay regular monthly bills (car payment, cell phone, mortgage, recurring medical bills, etc.). And another 57% say they prefer digital methods to pay infrequent bills (one-time medical bills, court fines, insurance payments, etc.).

This means that your employees must process all these payments. But what happens when a payment is denied? Employees must now investigate the reason for the denial and manually update any incorrect account information in the hopes that the charge will now be approved. Your employees must also manually review and reconcile all these transactions.

These are just some of the tasks an integrated payment platform can handle for you.

Automatically update accounts

With many of these payments being made with a credit card, some of the credit card information will inevitably be out of date. We’ve all experienced trying to make a payment, but the charge was denied because the date on the saved credit card was expired. Now imagine having hundreds or thousands of those. That’s a lot of information that needs to be updated.

But what if your payment platform was able to connect with the credit card companies to automatically update debit and credit card information? That would certainly eliminate the task of chasing down and updating this information manually. After all, there are more important things your employees could be doing. ​

Updated transaction information

How many times has a customer called about a problem with an account, yet your employee doesn’t see the same thing as the customer? Or several payments failed to settle and now reversals are needed? Inevitably, the employee must access multiple systems to get updated information. This is because your current platform doesn’t fully integrate with your system of record. And your employees are forced to access multiple systems to gather all the necessary information.

Modern, innovative payment platforms that integrate with your core operating system will enable automated status updates as well as easy batch reversals. These features provide real-time updates on all transactions and allow your employees to reverse multiple posts with just a few clicks.

Your employee will no longer have to analyze and compare multiple reports from different systems, then manually enter individual reversals one at a time.

Chargebacks or transactions that do not settle due to insufficient funds are automatically posted as a batch file. This allows employees to reverse the transaction in minutes – improving efficiency and accuracy.

Enhanced reconciliation

It is time-consuming to review and reconcile all transactions to determine:

• If a payment has been successfully deposited into the given trust accounts.
• If any payments need to be reversed due to insufficient funds or a chargeback needs to occur.
• If funds need to be transferred from one trust account to another.​

These manual processes can be a nightmare for employees and organizations, as multiple errors can easily be introduced.

Again, if your payment platform doesn’t fully integrate, your employees are stuck completing these manual, time-consuming tasks.

However, a payment platform that fully integrates with your system of record can provide enhanced reporting capabilities. With configurable reports, employees get clear visibility into how much has been deposited into each trust account and what amounts must be transferred to different accounts. This helps take the guesswork out of payments reconciliation and helps streamline your daily operations.

Say hello to efficiency

Your employees are working hard. So it’s incumbent on you to give them the tools they need to be more efficient and productive at their jobs. And a payment platform that fully integrates with your current workflow system is one of those tools.

The right all-in-one platform will revolutionize your collection processes with one-of-a-kind integration and automation. It will eliminate many of the manual tasks, making the entire process more efficient and accurate. And it will free your employees for more important assignments.

The right solution is waiting for you.