Text Messaging is quickly becoming the most effective way of communicating with Credit Union members and has been particularly successful in increasing on-time loan payments. That’s because Text Messaging can be used not only to remind members about upcoming — or delinquent — bills but also to facilitate the payment process. Paying via mobile device is fast, efficient, and decreases the number of late payments.
With Eltropy announcing its partnership this week with SWBC, it’s a great time to outline why Text Payments is an essential feature to offer to your members.
Debt collection
It is difficult to make calls reminding members to pay their bills, or, worse, asking them to make their account current. Employees with debt collection duties are tasked with making awkward contacts or sending emails, which are largely ignored.
Text Messages have a much higher success rate than other methods of communication. That’s in large part because more than 90% of people in the United States have a mobile device within reach at any given moment, according to research from Morgan Stanley. In addition, open rates are more than 95%, research shows. Members who receive payment reminder texts will most likely view that content much quicker than if they received it through another messaging channel, such as email. Text reminders result in faster payments and fewer bills.
Providing a Text Messaging solution relieves credit union staff of collections duty, and offers a low-stress way for staff to send — and members to receive — billing alerts. Automating monthly reminders could also potentially save collections departments hundreds of hours a year, and integrating SMS payment solutions further reduces friction between the customer and the payment process.
Payments
Encrypted links let customers pay as soon as they receive a text that payment is required. There is no need to visit the website and search for the payment portal. Within seconds of receiving a Text Message, a member can securely process a payment.
SMS is an inexpensive collection method. Research shows that SMS payments cost lenders roughly 25% of the amount needed for automated voice services and just a tenth of the amount needed to pay agents to secure collections. Members can submit payments quickly, and for those that are overdue, it is less embarrassing and intrusive for customers to respond to an automated system.
Credit Unions can choose the best way to initiate the payment: by phone through an automated service, online via payment portal, or entering within the SMS payment card details within a secure payment process that takes moments to complete. Sensitive payment data and personally identifiable information is encrypted and routed directly to the payment service provider, never entering the merchant businesses’ network infrastructure.
With Text Messaging solutions such as Eltropy, Credit Unions can send compliant and secure automatic reminders, follow-up texts, as well as encrypted payment links so members can quickly and efficiently process debt collections. Text-to-pay offers members an extra level of convenience, and can considerably reduce costs associated with collections.
