Two software solutions from Eiger Systems are helping businesses to make the most of the new BACSTEL-IP platform that replaced the BACSTEL payments system at the end of 2005. Together, BANK WIZARD® and EigerPAY Gateway help users to minimise payment failures and the associated costs by enabling consistent validation of payment information, both at the point of data entry and during submission.
One of the objectives of BACSTEL-IP, the new technology infrastructure from BACS Payment Schemes Ltd, is to reduce the number of electronic Direct Debit and Direct Credits that fail. To achieve this, a central feature of BACSTEL-IP is the requirement for businesses to be more stringent in validating payment data prior to submission to BACS.
BANK WIZARD, Eiger Systems’ validation solution, verifies and reformats bank account details when they are first entered into an organisation’s payment application. Error rates at the point of capture can be as high as 8%, resulting in rejected payments which, for many organisations, can have a direct impact on administration costs and customer service. BANK WIZARD substantially reduces the time spent on administering rejected payments, thereby helping users to improve efficiency, minimise risk and raise customer service levels.
Once bank account data has been entered successfully, Eiger Systems’ BACSTEL-IP submission software, EigerPAY Gateway, validates both the format and the content of the data before it is submitted to BACS for processing.
The software makes some 150 checks, including many that are not required under current BACS rules. One key validation check is that the sort code and account number are still valid. “It’s vital to do this final check as there’s always a period of time between capturing the data and actually using it,” says EigerPAY Gateway Product Manager, Matthew Croxford. “It’s far cheaper to prevent an error before submission than it is to make a correction afterwards.”
“EigerPAY Gateway makes payment information much more accessible”, says Jamie Jones, IT service delivery Manager of healthcare provider, HSA. “We now have access to many more details than before– reports, error records and files. We would never have known about these with our old system.” The system is also enabling HSA to retrieve error information about seven days more quickly than before. “This is an incredible saving,” Jamie Jones says.
Please note - Experian Payments was formally Eiger Systems