The Post Office is rolling out technology to
use bar codes to enable businesses to send payments to
customers.
The codes, which will be sent via email, text message or post
will cut the costs associated with payment by cheque. Recipients of
the code can merely take the code to any of the UK’s 14,000 Post
Office branches to access the cash instantly.
Payments will typically be refunds and incentives, and Identity
verification is an option for higher value transactions. There is
also a data capture service available to help businesses collect
customer preference information.
Gary Hockey-Morley, marketing director at the Post Office said:
"Our new payout service not only enables companies to make
promotional and incentive campaigns stand out from the crowd, it
can also be used to make instant refund and compensation payments.
The wide range of payment channels ensures that businesses can
expect improved response rates, at the same time as making
significant cost savings on campaigns which have previously paid
out using cheques."
One of the benefits is the ability to make payments to people
without bank accounts.
Joanna Weston, communication executive at Post Office business
customer Unilever, said, "We didn’t have a clear fulfillment
process in place to make a large quantity of small payments to our
customer base. This could have been problematic for us as raising a
cheque is 600 per cent more expensive than using the Post Office
payout postal order service.”
The Post Office
website >>
Unilever UK website
>>
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