Fast, Accurate Electronic Payment Delivery for Pennies per Transaction

In partnership with your financial institution, Visa can help reduce your remittance processing costs and enhance your operational efficiencies with fully electronic payment processing. The key is Visa ePay, a remittance service that electronically collects and delivers online consumer bill payments to you—automating the entire funds exchange process, even adjustments and error corrections.

A Cost-Effective Solution

Visa ePay offers your business a reliable, cost-effective solution that eliminates the high operating costs and excessive number of exception items associated with your customers’ use of online bill payment services.

Through Visa ePay, online bill payments originated by consumers are collected from multiple sources and entered into a single electronic data stream that leads directly to your financial institution and accounts receivable system.

The benefits are greater productivity and reduced costs for you. And quality service for your customers.

Reducing Exception Items in Payment Processing

For the typical biller, online consumer bill payments create an unacceptable number of exception items when these payments are converted to checks or check-and-list items and presented without appropriate payment detail to facilitate posting.

• Processing these exception items costs billers up to 10 times as much as standard check payments. And, the exception items have the potential to create customer service issues, such as payment delays and posting errors that can negatively affect operations and customer relationships.
• Visa ePay reduces exception item processing by delivering customers’ online payments in a standardized, content-rich, electronic format that supports efficient, cost-effective electronic posting and simplifies follow-up research.
• Participating in Visa ePay enables you to handle the growing volume of online consumer payments, while avoiding the cost and other drawbacks of increased exception item processing.

How Visa ePay Works

Visa ePay makes it easy to improve electronic payment processing. Here’s how it works:

• Your financial institution registers your business on the Visa ePay Universal Biller File (UBF).
• You invoice your customers according to your existing procedures.
• Your customers use online bill payment services to authorize their financial institutions to pay your invoices.
• Your customers’ financial institutions (or bill payment service providers) electronically transmit payment information to Visa ePay.
• Visa ePay electronically collects, performs edit checks, and delivers consolidated consumer payments to your financial institution.
• Your financial institution forwards accounts receivable data to you for posting and deposits funds into your account.
• If a payment return or account correction is necessary, you electronically forward the item to the payment originator for resolution.

How You Benefit as a Biller

Visa ePay’s end-to-end electronic connection ensures that your customers’ online bill payments are processed quickly, efficiently, and accurately—resulting in lower payment processing costs, increased revenue, and improved customer satisfaction. Here’s how:

Single-point access to multiple payment originators. When you participate in Visa ePay, you’re listed in the Visa ePay Universal Biller File (UBF). The listing puts payment originators everywhere on notice that you accept electronic payments and provides them with a reliable way to identify you and the account number formats and edits you require. This means that payment originators are more likely to send you payments electronically, increasing the number and cost efficiency of the payments you receive.

Lower remittance processing costs. Receiving online consumer bill payments in a fully electronic format costs pennies per transaction, compared to paper check processing costs of $1.00 to $1.50 per item. ¹

Fewer exception items. Visa ePay significantly reduces check-and-list items, minimizing exception items and making remittance processing more cost effective, particularly for high-volume billers.

Fewer customer service inquiries. Visa ePay helps reduce the high number of customer service calls resulting from “non-standard” payments. And, if a transaction requires research, Visa ePay makes it easy to retrieve transaction detail for fast resolution and responsiveness to your customers’ inquiries.

Guaranteed funds. For every Visa ePay payment, funds are secured by your customers’ financial institutions before payment messages are sent to your financial institution. Authorization and settlement in “good funds” provide payment assurance and one-time processing that conventional remittance can’t match.

Faster funds availability. Visa ePay adds speed and efficiency to the online consumer bill payment process. Participating in Visa ePay accelerates the receipt of payments and accounts receivable data. Settlement is typically completed in less than 24 hours.

Minimize processing errors. Visa ePay automatically validates customer account information according to the requirements specified in the Visa ePay UBF, eliminating non-postable items and minimizing delayed and incorrect postings that can negatively affect customer service and satisfaction.

Maximize electronic payments with reversibility. Visa ePay provides a reversible settlement option to eliminate expensive manual processing when a payment originator requests that you return an item. When you accept electronic reversals, payment originators are likely to increase the volume of electronic payments they send to you, further increasing the number and cost efficiency of the payments you receive.

Visa ePay Credit Counseling Automation Service

The Visa ePay Credit Counseling Service links to consumer credit counseling agencies nationwide, enabling participating billers/creditors to negotiate Debt Management Proposals (DMPs) and receive payments electronically.*

As a biller/creditor, you can use Visa ePay to streamline your workflow with participating credit counseling agencies, helping you achieve these significant cost and operational benefits:

Reduce processing costs. Replace high-cost paper processing with payments delivered in a standard electronic format for efficient, cost-effective automated posting and simplified follow-up.

Improve operational efficiencies. Reduce time-consuming paperwork and the high number of customer service calls associated with processing paper proposals.

Post payments faster. No more waiting for mail or special handling—electronic payments post quickly and accurately.

Save time and labor. The shorter and more efficient approval cycle for electronically negotiated DMPs reduces manpower requirements and enables debtors to begin repayment sooner. In addition, creditors can automatically accept DMPs that meet pre-defined acceptance criteria.

Eliminate Fair Share invoicing. Net and gross fields allow consumer credit counseling agency clients’ records to be credited with gross payments, while the agency settles in net payments—minimizing paperwork, record keeping, and additional payments processing.

Consolidate correspondence. Electronic communications using free-form messages provide a convenient audit trail—no more lost information.

Discourage bankruptcies. Faster, more efficient, hassle-free service encourages debtors to stay with their DMPs and discourages bankruptcy as an option.

For More Information

For more information, please call your Visa Account Executive or Contact Us.