ACH Payment Processing with IVR Payments
IVR Payments and ACH Processing
Payment collection is arguably the most important part of any business.
Organizations today need to offer as many payment options as possible, making customer payments as simple and painless as possible.
One option is to utilize ACH payment processing via IVR Payments. Organizations and businesses that invoice their customers are always on the lookout to maximize efficiency and reduce costs associated with receivables.
This often means looking at alternative payment channels that could be utilized. There are a number of new and different payment channels, and also subsets of the payment channels that are created using today’s technology that offer added value to both merchant organizations and their customers.
A payment channel is simply a mechanism for which customers remit payment. As an example, a face to face exchange of value of currency is a payment channel, no matter the form the currency is exchanged in. In other words, the value of currency might be from a credit card, paper money or a bank check. Some other payment channel types:
- Payment by phone
- Internet
- SMS Payment Solutions
- Truncation of a paper bank check
Interactive Voice Response or IVR payments allows people to make payment by phone, typically without a customer service rep. By using a series of prompts to gather information like account number, name etc, the customer is guided through a process where eventually they are asked to provide their bank and routing number.
The customer information gathered is a function of what the organization wants to collect. In many cases a business might upload an Excel file with customer info, eg balance owed. The ACH IVR Payment Solution can present specific customer details so that customer knows they are paying the $88 they owe.
Organizations and businesses that utilize IVR Payments tend to know their customers well. They have an ongoing relationship with them in that their customer has benefitted from the organization’s services or products, and generally continues to do so. In some instances the organization might also be utilizing an ACH recurring billing method for receivables, assuming the payments are for the same amount in each payment cycle frequency. Quite simply, there are some customers who simply choose not to enroll in automated recurring payments. This is one driving factor for organizations to adopt other payment channels such as IVR Payments.
In other organizational scenarios the billing amounts are not the same each month, and while there are API payment integrations possible for the billing organization to create and employ a quasi-recurring payment scenario, the varying billing cycle amounts tend to be met more favorably in some organization types if the cycle payment amounts are “approved” on a case by case basis. In other words, if an organization is billing a customer for services that vary from $100 on one given month to $3,000 on the next billing cycle, the customer is less likely to give carte blanche to the billing organization to debit them without first checking their balance and granting approval.
As you may know, eCheck transactions are processed at a much lower rate than credit card transactions. As we have stated above, organizations that might utilize IVR for payments most likely know their customer well and have an ongoing relationship with them. They’re not selling a widget and shipping it with never hearing from them again. This makes ACH Payments (eChecks) an ideal payment modal for employing along with IVR Payments, especially for higher dollar transactions that invoice billing is generally associated with, e.g., loan payments or professional services.
