MasterCard RPPS Takes the Sting Out of Account Number Conversions

Patent-Pending Solution Can Help Eliminate Rejections and Smooth Conversions—Automatically

In the past, account number conversions required a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. Payments that should be coming in electronically could get dropped to paper check. Payment posting could slow, with a consequent upswing in the volume of customer service calls.

To resolve these payment routing and posting issues, MasterCard RPPS is now piloting the account conversion service, planned for general release in the second half of 2007.

“Our new service not only automates the conversion process, which is great news in itself, but it also delivers two features that are firsts for the electronic bill payment industry—automatic notifications of change [NOCs] and stop-payment functionality,” says Darlene Lohman, AAP, CTP, product leader, MasterCard RPPS Product Management.

“NOCs deliver information to originators so that payment account information can be corrected before any future payments are sent,” she says. “The stop-payment function enables billers and their processors to screen and reject unwanted payments before those payments even reach them.”

Routing and posting to the right recipient

The account conversion service automatically identifies incoming payments that require account number conversion, changes the old account numbers to the new numbers, and routes payments to the appropriate recipient.

“The entire function is integrated into our existing electronic payment process. It remains completely transparent to both the consumer and the biller, and it has no effect on our core processing,” says Lohman. “The screening is done every time we process payments, so the biller is able to post those converted payments quickly and accurately.”

Billers sometimes choose to retain a segment of a portfolio that is being converted, and the account conversion service can easily and automatically accommodate that need.

“This situation arises quite often,” she says. “In effect, the original owner is in a ‘deconversion’ mode with respect to those accounts. We simply load those numbers into a conversion table and use the service in reverse to route them back to the original owner. It’s an elegant solution.”

Notification of change

Automated NOCs—a feature unique to the MasterCard RPPS solution—inform originators of account number changes. The notices facilitate the updating of consumer payment profiles, whether the originator chooses to perform the updates proactively or notify affected consumers about needed changes.

“We provide the old account number and the new in a format that helps originators to automatically update their systems,” says Lohman. “This promotes the conversion of account numbers at the payments’ source, and the remittance of clean data.”

Stop!

In the paper check environment, when a biller does not want to accept payments from a customer any longer, the biller can inform its lockbox processor to reject those payments. That functionality has not previously existed in the electronic environment, but the MasterCard RPPS conversion service will rectify that with an electronic stop-payment functionality.

“The biller will send a file to MasterCard RPPS designating the account numbers from which it no longer will accept payments,” says Lohman. “We will screen all the payments for that biller against the file, and if we get a match with an incoming payment, we will reject that payment and send it back, notifying the originator why the payment was returned.”

One common use of this service will likely be in the case of loan defaults or failures to maintain insurance premiums. For example, a lender would jeopardize its legal remedies if it were to accept loan payments after declaring a borrower in default. Consequently, MasterCard RPPS expects that the mortgage, loan, and insurance industries will find this feature especially valuable.

Good feedback

To date, participant feedback on the service has been extremely positive. (See the article on the PNC conversion in the winter 2006 edition of RPPS Update.)

“The savings enjoyed by our biller/processor customers have been noteworthy. Everyone has been very happy to get the rejections out of their systems and eliminate the manual labor that conversions have previously required,” says Tom Carey, senior business leader, MasterCard RPPS Sales and New Business Development. “On the sending side, originators are telling us that the NOCs are very useful to them.”

“The account conversion service delivers a welcome solution to what had been a thorny problem for everyone,” Carey concludes.

For more information

To learn more about the account conversion service, contact MasterCard RPPS Sales and New Business Development at 800-535-2130.