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Today's global marketplace demands that businesses have secure and efficient services to handle its payments. Payments are an integral part of everyday life for a good deal of the world’s population. They support all types of commercial and economic activity and affect everyone - employers, employees and consumers alike.
We all have an expectation that the payments we make will be secure, reliable and ultimately, successful. But beyond those basic expectations, most businesses and commercial organisations are both unaware and don’t have the time, to consider what is happening behind the scenes. However, this attitude could have grave implications for the efficiency of your AP department.
Over last few years, there have been dramatic changes to the ways in which UK businesses can meet its payment obligations, including:
- Bacstel-IP
- UK Faster Payments Service
- SEPA
- Payment Services Directive
Every one of these changes requires a business to invest in new software and procedures to ensure systems and processes are suitable to enable the payment type required. Unfortunately, despite the main drivers for these changes being efficiency and cost savings, the reality is often the reverse, as organisations suffer higher costs and increased bureaucracy as a result of their implementation.
For businesses that are multi-banked, the negative effect is increased as multiple systems and interfaces need to be maintained and upgraded as the changes are implemented.
In addition, if you are making payments to foreign suppliers or receive funds from foreign customers in their local currency, chances are you've been affected by recent foreign currency volatility. While currency fluctuation is an inherent part of the market, there are tools to help businesses better hedge the risk, reduce costs and protect their bottom line. Despite this, the majority of UK finance departments still do not avail themselves of these services and perhaps because of a lack of investment from the top, or because they’re unaware of the advantages, opt instead for the generic payment services provided by their bank.
In this difficult economic environment, businesses are beginning to look for a centralised payment system that handles the entire range of an organisation’s payment needs including foreign exchange and international payments, validation of bank details for maximum success rates, all domestic payment types including Bacs, Direct Debit, CHAPS and UK Faster Payments.
A centralised system like this reduces costs and enables maximum efficiency by processing all payment transactions in one place. It does this by enabling all processing in a single engine, negating the need for multiple bank interfaces and bank software products. To date, payment systems that centralise payments have been expensive to procure, install and maintain and so have been mainly available to larger organisations with sufficient spending power and IT resources.
For a growing number of smaller businesses, access to this type of functionality could radically enhance payment processes within the whole of the finance function. What is needed is a low-cost alternative to expensive enterprise-wide software solutions or generic banking platforms.
For the past 3 years, one such company, TransGlobal Payment Solutions has been helping businesses of different sizes and from a variety of sectors achieve just that. Through it’s flagship managed service, PayFac, TransGlobal is able to offer all payment types from a single web-based platform.
PayFac offers one of the most innovative and functionally rich alternatives to multiple systems or expensive enterprise-wide software available on the market today. Through PayFac, customers can manage their foreign exchange and international payments and all of their domestic payment needs. Despite having access to all of these payment functions, TransGlobal customers save £000’s each year by reducing their software and maintenance fees and also through PayFac’s very low transaction fees.
PayFac is also continually evolving, so that it automatically provides access to the latest payment innovations, such as UK Faster Payments, without any additional costs to the customer as the functionality is just added to PayFac as and when it becomes available. TransGlobal are also adding Direct Debit Management to PayFac in the very near future, so that organisations that want to collect money by Direct Debit can also process all of their DD transactions through PayFac.
Future enhancements for PayFac include electronic document management, including e-billing, and the launch of a currency pre-paid card, to enable cheaper and more efficient handling of currency overseas.
So, with the CEO’s eyes fixed on the organisation’s bottom line, every organisation needs to be sure that they are doing all they can to achieve the best results possible. Time may be limited, but it doesn’t have to follow that your productivity and receptiveness to innovation needs to be too. To find out more about TransGlobal and Payfac and what they can do for your organisation, go to www.transglobalpayments.com or call:
0844 815 3240 |
Foreign Exchange 
