Security, Reliability, and Accuracy for Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies

Visa ePay Credit Counseling Automation Service enables you to pay and communicate with your clients’ billers and creditors—completely electronically. By participating, you eliminate the paper, phone calls, and faxes typically associated with conducting your business. The results are greater productivity and reduced costs for you and faster service with fewer errors for your clients.

Automation and Standardization Improve Process and Reduce Costs

In today’s environment, managing Debt Management Proposals (DMPs) involves costly and time-consuming manual processes that tie up personnel and other resources. In addition, delays involved with these processes can motivate consumers to pursue alternatives—including bankruptcy.

The Visa ePay Credit Counseling Automation Service helps you address these issues by enabling you and your clients’ creditors to automate and standardize payment and information-sharing tasks with the following services:

Payment origination to creditors. Pay creditors electronically through your sponsoring financial institution. Creditors receive prompt electronic payment data from which they update their accounts receivable records. Your agency benefits from cost-effective, fast, fully electronic payment delivery and accurate posting.

Electronic debt management proposal negotiation. Facilitate the flow of information between your agency and creditors. Standardization and automation of DMPs enable you to implement plans within days of meeting clients and to view creditors’ full or summary positions online. Critical information, such as balances and last payments, may be verified automatically and results are returned within 24 hours. And, electronic close-out messages enable you to remove clients when plans are completed.

How Visa ePay Credit Counseling Automation Service Works

Visa ePay is a bi-directional system that can facilitate exchange of financial and non-financial messages between your agency and participating creditors. This graphic illustrates the Visa ePay transaction flow:

How You Benefit as a Credit Counseling Agency

Your agency can achieve these benefits when you participate in the Visa ePay Credit Counseling Automation Service:

Payment Origination to Creditors

Single-point access to multiple billers. All billers that participate in Visa ePay are listed in the Visa ePay Universal Biller File (UBF), providing you with a reliable way to identify billers with which you can transmit data electronically.

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.

Post payments faster by eliminating paper processing. No more waiting for physical delivery to post client payments. Payments typically post within 24 hours. And, communications between parties are conducted electronically, saving time and improving record keeping.

Minimize processing errors. Automatic validation of client account information according to creditors’ requirements, specified in the Visa UBF, eliminates non-postable items, minimizing delayed and incorrect postings that can negatively affect client service and satisfaction.

Eliminate Fair Share invoicing. Net and gross fields allow clients’ records to be credited with gross payments, while you settle net payments. This eliminates the invoicing process, giving you faster access to operating funds.

Electronic Debt Management Proposal (DMP) Negotiation

Improve operational efficiency. Reduce time-consuming paperwork and customer service calls associated with processing paper proposals.

Save time and labor. Electronic DMPs reach creditors in days, instead of weeks. The shorter and more efficient approval cycle reduces manpower requirements and enables clients to begin repayment sooner. In addition, creditors can automatically accept DMPs that meet pre-defined acceptance criteria.

Increase Fair Share contributions. Creditors prefer electronic DMPs and some reward participating agencies with higher Fair Share percentages.

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

Improve client retention. Faster, more efficient, hassle-free service encourages clients to stay with their DMPs and discourages bankruptcy as an option.

Sponsorship

To use the Visa ePay Credit Counseling Automation Service to originate payments to creditors, you need a certified Visa ePay consolidator or a financial institution sponsor. A consolidator is an organization that can provide sponsorship and has certified to Visa ePay telecommunications and technical requirements. For a list of consolidators, please visit www.visadps.com/products/visa_epay_consolidators.html . A sponsor is a Visa Principal member that guarantees your participation. Most often, your sponsor is your depository financial institution.

For More Information

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