DebiCheck has been a hot topic in the financial world for some time. Initially, this new debit order system was met with uncertainty on the part of both service providers and customers. As time has progressed and all parties have become more comfortable with the system, the merits of the DebiCheck system have become more visible.
We sat down with Vaughn Hechter, Head: Customer Services for NuPay and Delter, to find out what is currently happening with DebiCheck and what his dynamic team is planning for the future. He starts our discussion by mentioning that they are extremely proud and thankful to announce that the entire NuPay customer base has been migrated to DebiCheck and that all transactions are now DebiCheck transactions: “It was sad saying farewell to AEDO and NAEDO, but it was necessary and opens up a brand new chapter for the payments arena.”
He goes on to say that December has been a challenging period for the industry as a whole: “The fact that December’s public holidays only allowed 10 tracking days presented challenges for role-players within the industry in terms of allocation of payment dates and the subsequent disputes that came as a result of striking on pay dates earlier in the month. The pricing of the new DebiCheck system is also a challenge and the industry is bearing the brunt of these fees. NuPay has worked hard over the years at driving compliance and bringing businesses that were previously running cash businesses into a formalised environment. The high cost of DebiCheck, coupled with the movement of salary dates in December by employers, might drive businesses back to an informal environment that will not benefit consumers. Our Account Management team and customer base have responded to this challenge with innovative concepts around pay date management and will keep innovating and running analytics to drive accurate collections.”
Business owners have in the past experienced selected challenges creating DebiCheck transactions. Pulsing Hechter on how NuPay has responded to this, he shares that the TT3 card and PIN-based transactions have been optimised by our development teams and are currently running extremely well: “Any system always has room for improvement and we welcome feedback and input from our customers to assist us to constantly improve and drive excellence in our collections platforms. There are still some isolated challenges with selected banks from time to time; however, we are optimistic that these will be resolved soon.
“Our teams are also working tirelessly to innovate and develop new features that will improve and revolutionise our customer base’s experience with DebiCheck transactions. Some of the features and enhancements that we are working on will offer customised transaction types with different life cycles and functionality. We are also re-engineering some systems to ensure enhanced stability and further improved performance of the platforms from a creation, processing and reporting perspective. Watch this space for exciting announcements,” Hechter asserts.
Asking Hechter to share his thoughts on the future, he starts by saying they are so grateful to see that businesses are starting to bounce back after COVID-19. In fact, most of the customer base has pulled through to obtain higher than pre-COVID numbers and there has even been an improvement in the success rate of transactions. He attributes this to the market possibly being “cleaner” from a credit recipient perspective, which contributes to the overall positive trend. His thoughts on DebiCheck in 2022? “We expect the systems to stabilise and continue to grow. We hope to see some enhancements and will continue to lobby for changes such as longer tracking periods, date adjustment amendments and non-reversibility of selected transaction type changes and improved interbank costs to lower the overall cost of the DebiCheck system.”
The future is looking bright, and we will be there every step of the way.
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