Utility Billing Management Company
Utility Manager Moves AP Program to Fintech: Increases Card Revenue by 48%.
BACKGROUND
New technologies and shifting consumer expectations are transforming virtually everything, and the U.S. power and utilities market is no exception. As the digital trend spreads and brings unprecedented change, traditional utilities are looking to reposition themselves for relevance. And in doing so, they’re reassessing their entire business models, all the way down to operations.
That’s why one Edenred Pay client, specializing in utility billing and management solutions, decided to rethink their accounts payable. As one member of the company’s senior leadership recalls, “We weren’t getting the kind of support we needed to fully optimize our payments workflow, and we knew we could do better in terms of monetizing our spend. That’s why we made the decision to consider a fintech.”
SOLUTION
Edenred Pay stood out in comparison to more traditional payments providers and other fintechs because of its core focus on B2B payments. This focus meant increased innovation, flexibility and a continuously evolving, more comprehensive solution.
And, while it was critical to identify a provider with a platform and expertise to process hundreds of millions in monthly payments, equally important was cultural fit.
RESULTS
Switching from a bank to a fintech is paying off. In less than a month, Edenred Pay helped improve payment decisioning—the automatic routing of a transaction via virtual card, check or ACH based on the payee—and increased Utility Billing Management Company’s card volume by 28 percent, with an additional 20 percent, shortly thereafter, and plenty of room to grow. That translates to a major boost in card revenue, not to mention savings on check spend and labor.
Not only that, but the Utility Billing Management Company can also streamline their entire accounts payable operation. The solution involved a custom configuration utilizing Edenred Pay Connect, Edenred Pay’s application programming interface (API). The company can push and pull data through their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to and from Edenred Pay’s Payment Automation Platform.
