Front-line teams better-equipped to support customers with payment queries.

allpay Limited, the UK’s leading payment specialist, has helped the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) – an arm’s length body of the Department of Health – to reduce administration time and allow its front-line teams to better support customers after implementing its cloud-based direct debit solution.

The solution, which allows NHSBSA to collect payments for Prescription Prepayment Certificates (PPCs) in England via direct debit, went live in February. It allows NHSBSA’s 300 call centre staff to set-up, amend and cancel schedules, utilising allpay Limited’s RESTful APIs and cloud-based management portal.

As part of this solution, Crown Commercial Service (CCS) supplier allpay Limited, which provides cloud-based payment solutions to central and local government, successfully migrated nearly 700,000 direct debit instructions, generating approximately seven million transactions per annum.

“The system is very user-friendly and has given the call centre staff much more confidence in supporting customers when setting up, amending or cancelling a direct debit instruction.

“Previously, senior staff were faced with between 350-400 payment-related queries on a daily basis – from changing of bank details to amendment of schedules, for example. This has reduced by approximately 90%, as the call centre team are now able, and feel more confident, to support and carry out customer requests, by better utilising allpay Limited’s solution.”

- Joanne Cheetham, Service Delivery Manager at NHSBSA

allpay Limited’s project team engaged with NHSBSA teams in October 2016 with a migration plan produced for the go-live weekend in February 2017. A later requirement was added to the project scope for allpay Limited to produce and despatch the correspondence letters confirming set-up, amend and cancellations to customers. As allpay Limited offers this service as part of its fully managed solution, it was able to deliver this within the NHSBSA’s go-live date, producing nearly 100,000 customer letters a month.

Joanne Cheetham added: “The NHSBSA has gone through a few direct debit implementations in the last five years and this migration has been the smoothest one – we have been really pleased with it; on the whole it’s been like a dream. We developed a strong working relationship with allpay Limited’s project team – any queries were dealt with quickly and they were very flexible with our requirements, while their onsite presence over the go-live dates was also really appreciated. “allpay Limited’s flexibility to incorporate the letter production into the solution allowed us to achieve our go-live date and avoid any extension penalties from our previous supplier.”

“We are delighted to have facilitated the migration on time. This demonstrates our ability to streamline payment services for central government and its agencies, providing a cutting-edge platform and functionality to reduce administration and user queries. We look forward to continuing the strong working relationship we have developed with NHSBSA.”

- Tony Killeen, Managing Director of allpay Limited

Collecting more than £6bn a year from more than 60 million transactions, allpay Limited is the UK’s leading payment services specialist, offering the widest range of payment collection services. The business is part of allpay Limited, established in 1994, and headquartered in Hereford, with offices in London and Cheltenham.

allpay Limited works with central government departments, social housing, education, credit unions and debt collection agencies, to facilitate the collection and receipt of revenues. It works with nearly 90 per cent of the top 200 housing associations and nearly a half of UK local authorities. The company works with each of its clients to save them money through creating modern payment and card systems that are both cost effective, and convenient for the end consumer. In addition to bill collection, allpay Limited also operates prepaid cards and cashless technologies for a range of sectors.

allpay Limited currently provides prepaid solutions to a wide number of local authorities including Birmingham City Council, and has served charities and financial institutions by issuing over 40,000 cards through its ‘banking lite’ platform in the last year.