Editorial Viewpoint Keeping Promises Promises Matter, the 2006 MasterCard RPPS Customer Conference and Industry Symposium, allowed us all to take a step back and look, from multiple perspectives, at what's happening in our industry today. The diverse viewpoints shared by bankers, service providers, and billers; the Federal Reserve Board; the president of Global Technology and Operations for MasterCard Worldwide; and industry experts, among others, provided a rich composite portrait of our industry. For me, the chance to speak with many of our customers one-on-one over the three days proved exceptionally productive. Those conversations provided valuable feedback on how we might better serve our customers and the industry. That's really our role. MasterCard RPPS is designed to achieve a specific objective: enabling remote originators to easily, accurately, and effectively deliver payments on behalf of their customers to all the billers those customers want to reach. We accomplish this with four components that represent our core DNA: Connectivity—a single, secure connection to an open network carrying millions of transactions to thousands of endpoints Content—our biller directory, the original "Yellow Pages" of online bill payment Controls—the rules and safeguards that ensure valid endpoints and secure transmissions Creativity—the ability to anticipate the challenges and opportunities in our fast-evolving industry That fourth strand will be critical as we move into our third decade—and what I see as the third era of electronic bill payment. Our first decade was essentially aspirational, as we worked to fulfill our dreams for electronic bill payment and implement our ideas in the real world. The second focused on adoption. With mass adoption now occurring, the focus has shifted to optimization. How do we make it work better? For example, with the explosion in electronic payment volume, the very small percentage of exceptions is itself becoming a large number that can be very costly, as Beth Robertson of TowerGroup noted in her presentation. Our challenge as an industry is solving how we take this next level of defect out of the system. As demonstrated by the PNC case study that was presented at the symposium, MasterCard RPPS is working ahead of the curve to prevent unpostable payment transactions. Our patent-pending solution, deployed to help PNC Bank manage a complex portfolio acquisition, represents one of the most fundamental changes to our network since its inception: we're moving from functioning as a firewall against bad transactions to performing as a self-healing network. The symposium also addressed the role of bill presentment as we head into the future. In terms of optimization, the roundtrip functionality of presentment provides another sure way to reduce defects. Another major focus for the new era will be payment velocity, because the new wave of adopters will expect rapidity. Our multiple daily cycles—as demonstrated by the Atmos case study—provides an important capability for meeting this expectation, as will our guaranteed Same Day Payments Service. In the ongoing war on checks, we'll work to solve the "last mile" problem, reaching out to holdout billers and providing those endpoints to our customers. We'll also be working to get the checks out of the system for customers who are already processing electronically. The Commerce Intelligence Practice of MasterCard Advisors (see the spring 2006 edition of RPPS Update) offers a unique service for accomplishing that objective. A multichannel approach that provides a broad array of payment options for consumers, including recurring payments and innovative methods for reaching the unbanked population, can also contribute to a reduction in checks. All of these initiatives, strategies, tools—and optimization itself—really come back in the end to our larger theme at this year's symposium: keeping the promise we all make to our mutual customers for rapid, defect-free payments. We all have a responsibility to our customers to get it right. MasterCard RPPS is committed to partnering with you so we can all serve our mutual customers better. "MasterCard RPPS is committed to partnering with you so we can all serve our mutual customers better." Ed McLaughlin RPPS Update Newsletter Main Back to Top