We have lift-off!

Finally, after months of delays and diversions, the Williams Trade Supplies Ltd team took our very first Digital Debit customer payment this afternoon.

This was from a credit account customer (David at Falcon Heating - congratulations on being our first!) who will now no longer have to worry about missed payments, annoying chasing emails or the risk of being unable to purchase goods in our branches.

Digital Debit and the flexibility that the VRP technology brings to us means that not only can we offer David and his fellow tradespeople immediate benefits such as higher credit limits, longer terms and early warning of payment dates, but we'll be able to expand this to include 'self-managing' accounts (getting close to your credit limit? We'll set up a payment; prefer weekly or cumulative value-based billing? No problem).

This is only a pilot, so for the moment Digital Debit is only available to a small proportion of our customers and is a cost to our business rather than something that will improve our bottom line. However, the point of being at the bleeding edge of payments development is to understand the pros and cons and deal with them early, so that when we can offer V2 of the service to our whole market, it will be spot-on and will gain momentum quickly.

A heartfelt thank you to Edward Smith , Richard Ibell at Payit? and Hans Bouman , Casper Dijkstra at PayByLink BV for your tireless efforts to get this off the ground. This is only one step in our Open Banking journey, but it's a very important one, and I am very proud to have been there at the beginning.