PayTo: Bringing Real-Time Bank Payments To You

Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP for short) will soon be rolling out a new product, PayTo, which serves businesses, customers, and everyone in between. This guide breaks down everything you need to know about PayTo, how it works, and (most importantly) its benefits. 

What Is PayTo?

In short, PayTo is a new digital product that allows businesses and individual entrepreneurs to initiate real-time payments from customers’ bank accounts.

A summary of benefits for your business include:

• Reliable direct debit payments with real-time bank account validation

• Notifications throughout multiple payment stages, including when payments are paused, scheduled, or cancelled.

• Increased customer base thanks to the new payment options.

All of these features help to improve payment processing, reduce errors, and keep your business running as smoothly as possible.

How Does PayTo Work?

PayTo works by using something known as “pull” payments. 

The first step is for you (the business) to initiate a payment. Then your customer gives their consent to be billed through their banking app. And once you’ve received the OK, you’re free to start billing the customer in real-time. 

This allows practically instantaneous payment responses, which helps you get paid right faster, maintain cash flow, and reduce your risk of chargebacks and payment disputes.

Why add PayTo as a payment option?

Still on the fence? Here’s a deeper look at some of the fantastic benefits on offer:

Faster Payment Confirmation

Processing confirmation delays are definitely one of the downsides of traditional direct debit payments. Adding PayTo as a payment option to your suite of services will also benefit your business with real-time responses.

PayTo significantly speeds up the payment confirmation process and allows for much quicker settlement times.

This real-time response also helps your customers sort out any payment failures and gives you the confidence that your company will get paid. 

Streamlined Setup

Traditional direct debit payments can be difficult, time-consuming, and awkward to set up. Not to mention, you can’t even start validating payments until the direct debit agreement officially begins.

With PayTo, you get to enjoy a much more streamlined setup and near-instant approval. 

This makes it much easier for your customers to pay for your products or services and allows you to start reaping the benefits of direct bank payments right away. 

More Payment Options

When it comes to payment options, more is always better! You never know which one a customer will prefer. PayTo provides an online payment option for those customers who don’t wish to use credit cards, widening your customer base and boosting your business. 

If you offer PayTo, you will have an easier time accepting payments, more options for your customers and a faster settlement time.

Minimal Manual Updates

If your customers want to make changes to their direct debit payment agreement, the current process involves you having to find the time to manually perform those updates yourself. As your business scales and you get more customers, this will undoubtedly happen more often. And who has time for that? 

With PayTo, updates are much easier to handle, saving you time and freeing up your focus.

Increased Reliability

PayTo payment agreements are also designed to reduce disputed payments.

Thanks to the technology allowing customers to have more control, the risk of a customer lodging a dispute later down the track is significantly reduced. PayTo helps to minimise the risk and helps eliminate the manual administration process. Allowing you to run your business with more reliability and fewer chargeback risks.

Reduced Security Risks

Traditional direct debit payments are one of the most secure payment processing options available. 

However, we’d be lying if we said there wasn’t still room for improvement. 

Thanks to its instant customer verification, PayTo is now the fastest and safest option for account-to-account payments.

This keeps your customers and their data safer than ever, reducing the risk of fraud and 

Better Customer Service

Good customer service is essential to any business. Here are just some examples of what PayTo can do for your customers:

• Gives your customers more control over their payments (both one-offs and scheduled payments)

• Customers can pre-authorise payments to ensure maximum efficiency and security

• Customers are less likely to experience failed payments as a result of insufficient funds

• Customers can easily correct inaccurate account information and address issues of fraud

Customers can also easily view and manage their payments, all from one central location. With a few swipes in their banking apps, they can authorise and pause payment agreements in seconds.

Get Real-Time Bank Payments with PayTo

As you can see, PayTo is an excellent option for any business that wants to improve its direct debit process, reduce security risks, and provide its customers with a better experience.

Are you interested in adding PayTo as an option to process your customers’ payments?

At PayChoice, our knowledgeable team is eager and available to help your business prepare for offering PayTo so you can experience the benefits as soon as it becomes available in 2022.
Get in touch today to learn more.