What is PayTo?
PayTo is a new digial payment solution for merchants and businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts. As a real-time digital successor to direct debits, PayTo enables a new way to pre-authorise payments from consumer or business bank accounts.
How it works?
PayTo consists of:
- Payment initiation message capability. This is used by third parties to request payments from a customer’s bank account. Those payment requests are associated with a customer authorised payment arrangement, a ‘mandate’
- A centralised database for creating, storing and maintaining mandate records. This is owned and operated by NPP Australia
- Associated business rules. These provide assurance that the payment initiation messages will be acted upon by the customer’s financial institution. (NPPA, 2020)
What are the Use cases for PayTo?
1. In the simplest form, PayTo transactions are real-time direct debits. With normal batch-based direct debits you might wait for days for the money you debited your customer to arrive – or maybe to be told that it wasn’t available. With PayTo, money is debited, settled and cleared instantaneously. No need to wait.
2. As an extension, PayTo can be used to fund large disbursements exactly when they are needed rather than hours or days earlier. Your payroll, for instance. No need to have a large float sitting with your payroll provider for more than a few moments before you pay your staff.
3. And it gets more exciting. PayTo allows for the initiator of the transaction and the receiver of the transaction to be different entities. Unlike today’s direct debits, your company could instruct someone like Monoova (the initiator) to debit funds from your customer and credit a third-party bank account without ever touching the funds themselves. For custodial services and similar, this means that you can automate transactions between accounts without third party ‘interference’.
4. Finally, with a real-time direct debit, there is an alternative to scheme card dominance in eCommerce. Why pay expensive merchant service fees and wait for a day for funds to settle when you can get something that is both faster and cheaper?
What Are the Benefits of PayTo my Business and Customers?
Business Benefits
Authorised third parties will use PayTo to initiate payments have access to a range of features;
- Real-time validation of the customer’s account at the time of mandate creation
- Real-time funds availability check (at time of payment)
- Real-time confirmation of payment
- Real-time response on payment instruction
- Receive notifications of changes to mandate status, e.g. if mandate is cancelled or suspended
- Centralised storage of mandate records
- Data-rich capability with more data included in the payment message
- Ability to support more seamless, digitised and efficient process (NPPA, 2020)
Customer Benefits
PayTo creates a more digital and enhanced customer payments experience.
- Customers can digitally authorise/view/modify/manage the mandates they have given for third parties. These third parties then initiate payments from their bank account. Customers can easily move their mandate payment arrangements from one bank account to another account at a different financial institution.
- Customers have increased visibility and control over their various payment arrangements and madate payment arrangements linked to their account.
- Customers have more control over their account and can more easily perform mandate maintenance functions, e.g. cancel a mandate.
- Customers can also use PayID when setting up Pay To arrangements on their account rather than using their BSB and account number. Customers can also easily move mandate payment arrangements linked to their account to an account held at another bank.
- PayTo also provides a more digital, user-friendly customer experience. Banks can also choose to optionally deliver additional notifications to customers regarding their upcoming payments.
