PFP Energy is proud to be a not-for-profit energy company, or as they like to call it ‘Profit for Purpose’. And Ordo is on a mission to make paying and getting paid easy, meaning everyone can control their finances…it’s a partnership with that warm fuzzy feeling.
As the country went into Lockdown on 23 March 2020, Ordo launched the UK’s first Open Banking enabled end to end encrypted and wholly digitised request-for-payment service. At a time when businesses had to find ways to survive themselves, adjusting to their entire staff working from home, furloughed employees and colleagues who had become teachers overnight, they were offering a lifeline of payment holidays while their customers financially struggled.
With cash tight, in 2021 businesses need efficient and effective, but polite, payment solutions.
We all appreciate our key workers on the front line, and there are also essential services like energy, the staff for which are, for the foreseeable future, now scattered into their individual (hopefully warm!) homes.
How do you support a nation’s energy supply and collecting payment from people in a crisis, with staff that are also in the same boat, working at home amidst unprecedented change?
The answer is, to look at what your customer needs, how your business deliver it, and finding a solution that fulfils those requirments.
Lockdown has meant:
- A Financial MOT for consumers where 80% are worried about money and are cutting back
- 40% of direct debit users plan to cancel at least one direct debit, with 40% moving to expensive cards and 30% to hard to process bank transfers and cheques
- Over 50% of people who cancelled direct debits won’t put them all back once we’re out of lockdown
| Customers want: | PFP Energy wants: |
| * Support | * Lower costs |
| * Certainty | * Security |
| * Security | * Auto reconciliation |
| * Convenience | * Liquidity |
Ordo worked with PFP to enable PFP call centre staff to have access to a fully secure payment platform, myordo.com, allowing them to easily take instant payment from their customers giving both parties confidence the right amount has been paid and received into the right account. Ordo uses Open Banking to be able to transfer money directly and instantly from a customer’s bank account to the businesses bank account, by the business sending a pre-populated digital request for payment to their customer. The customer immediately receives a secure link or text message which, within a few taps from their smart phone, they can authorise payment, directly from their own bank account.
With Ordo’s secure bank transfer solution, both payer and business know they’ve been paid in real time, and the business receives its money in instantly cleared funds in the account of their choice automatically correctly referenced. Both parties know where they are, there is no security like PCI DSS card compliance needed as no account details are ever shared and no card is ever used.
By PFP using Ordo in their call centres, it meant PFP staff had a solution they could readily deploy for use in real time with a customer on the phone, giving support to both the call centre employee and the PFP customer at this already stressful time. PFP saves money as Ordo is only 20p max per request for payment sent, enabling it to continue pursuing it’s purpose of ploughing funding back into the community.
All this was with zero integration. All PFP needed to do was register at myordo.com, (which takes 3 minutes, we’ve timed it!), connect the account they want to be paid into, and use either the Ordo App and Web solution, or the Ordo bulk upload capability when sending out mulitiple requests for payment.
PFP also utilised the Ordo Bridge tool for automatic upload of requests for payment to be distributed, saving even more time and money and taking the pressure off their business, staff and ultimately customers.
As the Ordo service is entirely real time, the call centre staff can talk their customers through payment whilst they’re on the phone, giving both parties trust and confidence, lowering abandonment of payment to nearly 0, unlike other remote and delayed payment methods.
We’re pleased to have been able to provide PFP with a solution that has helped them, their customers and their community. PFP’s Head Of Service Delivery, Natalie Brundish, says that “Ordo has meant we have been able to foster customer relations, supporting them when they need us by giving them a solution that’s easy and allows them to stay on top of their finances. We have been able to reduce the burden on our staff working from home, often for the first time, and save costs so we can pass these savings on to our customers through our tariffs and services.”
At a time when people and businesses are under stress from all directions, ease, security and certainty are what people crave, and that is exactly what Ordo delivers. Book a short demo or try for free