Consumer delight via real time payments

Payments are everywhere, every exchange of value between entities culminates into a payment.?While brands spend considerable time and effort to create a great customer experience, the payment was always a process that was considered as clunky, or broken that hampers that smooth delivery, hence the entire evolution of payments from barter to using coins and now electronic means have worked towards making the process of payments easy, seamless, and almost invisible so the customer can enjoy the experience.

Instead of being utilitarian or running in the background, can payments deliver the wow factor for the brand, create customer delight or reinforce the brand promise? Can something as mundane as a real time account to account fund transfer deliver that?

Let me share two examples from my stint with India’s leading private bank where we used IMPS (Immediate Payment System) to create that wow factor for customers of our clients.

First example is from gold loan industry, Indians love their gold, it’s a symbol of wealth and prosperity and the commodity we turn to in times of need, hence loan against gold is also a huge business.

While exploring corporate use cases for IMPS we approached a leading gold loan provider and sought to understand the entire process to see identify an application for IMPS in their value chain.

When a customer walks in the branch and pledges his gold and applies for the loan, the valuation is done and the application is uploaded, the company has fully online application processing system and the loan application is approved within minutes if everything is in order, and the customer is issued a cheque from the branch or if he has provided his account details an electronic transfer is made. In case of a cheque, it will take 2-3 days to cash and funds will be deposited in account, if its NEFT then it will be a batch process, and it will take at least a day to process that instruction, add to it if the transaction is being done after bank transfer timings or on a bank holiday, add 1-2 days more to the processing time.

Now, look at it from customer’s side, given the relationship we have with gold, pledging it to get a loan is usually the last resort and the customer needs the money urgently, and given the current process constraints he still must wait anywhere between1-3 days to get his hands on the cash.

We suggested to integrate IMPS APIs with the loan approval system, as soon as loan is approved in the system, the API is fired, and the funds are transferred into the customer’s account in real time and the facility works 24/7 irrespective of banking holidays.

Now, imagine yourself as that customer who has just pledged his gold and receives funds directly into the bank account, while you are still in the offices of the loan company. From a brand promise perspective this is the wow moment, we gave you money right when you needed it.

Earlier, even if the loan is approved but banks are closed the fund disbursal will be on hold till the banks open, but now the firm can accept the applications and disburse the funds irrespective of banking hours, imagine the upside this creates on weekend or extended holidays.

Next use case came about from my personal experience with a Re-commerce firm, this company was buying used electronics like mobile phones, laptops etc., from individual consumers like me, refurbish them, and then sell them for a discounted price in the market.

The representative from the company visited me inspected the phone and agreed upon a price, and entered the details of the transaction in a mobile app (that also doubled as a diagnostic tool) that was provided by his firm, this guy was carrying a debit card that was given to him by the company, now to pay me he first had to go to an ATM withdraw the funds, hand over the cash to me and take the phone form me, it just so happened there was no ATM nearby and we spent almost an hour hunting for one.

We reached out to the founder of this firm, and I narrated my experience to him and then created a workflow using IMPS for him, in the mobile app we created the form where customer’s bank account and IFSC number can be entered, and upon approval of the process the IMPS API was triggered and the funds from a central account of the firm were debited and credited into customer’s account in real time, hence making the process extremely smooth and efficient for the customer, the company representative and the company itself.

Here the wow factor for the customer was as soon as he agreed upon the selling price, funds were credited into his account, for the company, they saved on costs of maintaining multiple accounts across the country and reconciling them at the end of day, logistics of providing cards to multiple representatives which was a high churn population was immense.

The bottom line is, from both these examples it is amply clear that payments are not only about moving money from account A to account B, but they can also aid in creating processes and experiences that can deliver customer satisfaction and delight which can go a long way in creating the value for business. And the key to do that is apart from metrics like cost, time of transaction etc. we also start to think about the emotional aspect of that payment process and the impact it can possibly have on the stakeholders involved.?