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CASE STUDY Custom Accounts-Receivable Solution from First Express Pays Off for Major Customer Pristine Data, High-Touch Service, and Connectivity with MasterCard RPPS Fuel First Express Success When First Express Remittance Processing, Inc., was approached by a major financial services firm in need of a custom solution for its paper and electronic payments, First Express was ready to provide the high touch that the project required. With the help of MasterCard RPPS, First Express delivers a full account-receivables (AR) processing solution that gives its customer exactly what it needs. Special needs The financial services firm had two primary requirements for First Express: ♦ First, it wanted a "no exception" payments solution that would free it from handling rejected items. ♦ Second, it required that payments files from First Express match its own AR system's unique requirements. "We couldn't send our customer a file with just the account number, date, and dollar amount," says Tom Edlin, manager, Sales and Customer Service, First Express. "The file has to mimic their remittance scan line, which contains other necessary data. So we maintain a database of account-specific OCR [optical character recognition] data that is appended to the payments we send on to our customer." Special care To provide exception-free service, First Express works very closely with MasterCard RPPS, which provides two important capabilities. First, of course, MasterCard RPPS is able to deliver a wide array of electronic customer-initiated payments - from online bill payments to walk-in payments - in a single package. Second, because the required data on the firm's remittance document can be difficult for a consumer to pick up, MasterCard RPPS allows the financial services firm to verify the originator's account data before the originator begins sending payments to the firm. This allows MasterCard RPPS to individually "turn on" originators that are permitted to transmit payments to the firm. "We collaborate closely with MasterCard RPPS to identify originators that are sending paper payments that can be converted to e-payments," Edlin says. MasterCard RPPS facilitates the conversion by providing the originator's contact name and number to First Express. If the originator wants to send electronic payments, it provides a file to the financial services firm that includes the account information for every consumer making payments to the firm via the originator. The firm verifies the account information against its Customer Information File (CIF) and identifies any edits necessary before returning the file to the originator. "Once the originator has made the necessary changes to the file, MasterCard RPPS gets the go-ahead to turn that originator on to send electronic payments to our customer through First Express," says Edlin. "We're now getting clean, postable electronic data - with greatly reduced costs and greatly accelerated processing times versus paper." Special handling First Express exercises special handling for all incoming payments for the firm to ensure that it delivers pristine data to its customer. "The firm provides us with a mini-CIF," says Edlin. "When a payment file comes in from MasterCard RPPS, for example, we automatically strip the firm's transactions out and bounce them off the CIF in our database to again validate account numbers that might have slipped past earlier edits." "We take the correct transactions - those that match the data in the CIF - and complete the data record according to our customer's format requirements. We incorporate those transactions into our daily transmission, married with the paper remittances, and off it goes to our customer," he says. As part of its no-exception service, First Express returns any nonmatched items to MasterCard RPPS, which, in turn, passes them back to the originators for resolution. "We don't pass the trash," says Edlin, "and neither does MasterCard RPPS. They conduct their own edits and checks before we see a file, so it arrives in good shape." Special delivery As a result of its careful data verification and its ability to retrieve and append unique account information, First Express achieves an exceptionally high AR posting rate for its customer. The financial services firm enjoys an exception-free payment environment that greatly speeds its own internal processes and keeps costs low. "We're able to deliver a unique solution for our customer," says Edlin. "Plus, with help from MasterCard RPPS, we maximize electronic payments to accelerate the process and keep costs down." Printer Friendly Version Back to Top