Between late November and the end of January, South African billers enter one of their most demanding stretches of the year. Before leaving on holiday, customers clear their accounts and pay for festive spending, and the new year then brings another wave of school fees, insurance premiums, municipal bills and subscription renewals. Each of those payments must land against the correct customer account. This November, Pay@, the Stellenbosch payments company behind bill payments since 2007, is putting the spotlight on the step in collections that quietly creates the most pressure: reconciliation.
With money flowing in through numerous channels at the same time, finance teams can lose days figuring out which payment belongs to which account. Pay@ designed its approach 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 times
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 unidentified deposit. During a slow month, staff can untangle these cases manually. At peak times, though, they stack up fast, holding up confirmations, triggering customer queries and keeping staff away from frontline service.
Across its whole payment network, Pay@ reports a reconciliation matching rate of 99.995%. The number comes from how the system is built. 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 therefore see who has paid, and how much, the moment payments arrive.
Choosing an integration route
Pay@, a payment solutions provider, gives billers a choice of two integration options to suit the way their systems run.
Option one is the Online API, which sends real-time validation and payment notifications to an endpoint supplied by the business. Once a customer pays, the payment is matched to a valid account number, the amount is validated and the biller receives an instant notification.
Option two is file-based. The biller supplies Pay@ with account numbers, customer details and amounts due. Pay@ validates payments locally and delivers a reconciliation file of received payments either at the close of each day or at an agreed interval. It is a natural fit for billers whose systems run in batches instead of in real time.
Smaller businesses can use Pay@’s self-service solution, creating invoices and managing payments through a dedicated payment portal. This option is aimed at businesses handling up to roughly 10,000 transactions a month, whereas the enterprise integration caters for volumes ranging from 10,000 to over 100,000 transactions a month.
Bills that meet customers where they are
Collections begin with the bill, well before any money changes hands. Through Pay@’s gateway, billers can deliver bills in many formats, among them printed invoices, PDF, SMS, QR codes, payment links, in-app, web-based and USSD. The company’s support systems handle the complete transactional cycle, covering bill presentment, real-time bill validation, payment confirmation and daily reports.
Over the holiday period this range of formats becomes especially useful, because customers may be away, on the road or using a phone instead of a computer. An SMS carrying a payment link, or a scannable QR code, makes paying far simpler while on the move.
A single connection to many channels
Through Pay@, billers 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 through banking apps, mobile network operators and other digital payment providers. Billers can take cash, card, EFT and mobile money, and receive a single settlement covering every payment.
On the digital side, Pay@ partnered with Capitec to let Capitec customers pay online in their banking app using just their registered cell number, with no need to share banking details. Pay@ also collaborated with the City of Cape Town on PayThat, which allows people to pay traffic fines more safely and quickly.
Billers looking for payment solutions able to reach customers in every population group will find this blend of physical and digital points of sale at the heart of what Pay@ offers. The company describes its solution as the region’s largest payment network across both physical and digital points of sale.
Pricing without the fixed fees
The integrated solution comes with no setup fees and no ongoing subscription fees. Billers are charged only a per transaction fee. That keeps things simple for a business deciding whether to open new payment channels ahead of a busy season, since costs track usage. A biller with a December surge and a slower February pays according to the volume that actually flows through, instead of covering a fixed monthly fee for capacity it only sometimes uses.
Nearly two decades of experience
Pay@ has been processing transactions across Southern Africa since 2007, with operations reaching Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The company is an authorised financial services provider, FSP No 29423, as well as a certified Third Party Payment Provider. Insurers, financial services providers, broadcasters, municipalities and money transfer businesses are among its clients.
Pay@’s point for businesses seeking a reliable payment provider before the festive season and the new year is that collection is not finished when the customer pays. It is finished once the payment has been matched, confirmed and recorded, and automated reconciliation proves its value at exactly that stage.
Learn more at https://payat.co.za
About Pay@
Pay@ is a payments company in South Africa 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 more than 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.
Media Contact
Pay@
Email: support@payat.co.za
Phone: +27 21 886 5557
Website: https://payat.co.za
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Alan Straton
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