Whether you work at a Credit Union, Housing Association, Court Office or Local Authority, “I’ve lost my card so I couldn’t make my payment” is a common opener to conversations in payment offices throughout the country.
Naturally, the only course of action is to issue a replacement card, meaning you need to request a new one from your outsource card partner. Once the request has been placed, the process will take a few days, especially when considering the replacement card has to be delivered to the client using the most cost-efficient postal service. As a result, the delay in receiving the new card can mean that the client is unable to make payments or address their arrears for up to a week.
Given that the client may have already been without a card for sometime, the knock-on effect can mean people run-up outstanding balances that are difficult to overcome. Subsequently, the cash flow of the payment office or service provider is negatively affected making budget management and service provision a real issue.
The ideal scenario would be to hand a replacement card over the counter straight away, however as many payment offices will have thousands of clients, holding replacement cards for everyone can be unrealistic and difficult to manage – plus, what do you do for people that are persistently losing their cards?
The simple answer is to bring the process in-house, allowing you to produce your own cards on demand. However, with professional card manufacturing equipment being so expensive, few payment offices will be interested or even have the resources to invest in a card personalisation bureau and the expertise required to operate it.
So what’s the realistic option?
PSC Systems have researched this issue over many years and, we believe, have found the perfect solution. New Horizons is a web-based service that enables you to issue replacement cards from your payment office. The system can be operated by anyone with a PC and can be used to issue permanent or temporary payment cards instantly.
Temporary card issuance doesn’t require any additional hardware, as subscribers can use pop-out cards that are integrated into a sheet of A4 paper, personalised from any standard office printer.
Issuing permanent cards from your payment office is also just as simple. This does require a small investment in a compatible desktop card printer, however that investment can pay for itself pretty quickly as the cost of posting replacement cards is removed entirely.
Pre-printed, blank (un-personalised) card stock can be held in the office, allowing you to simply load blank cards into the printer, identify the correct account using the New Horizons system and print off a new or replacement card, as required.
Both scenarios mean that you can ensure the client is given a card immediately, allowing payments to be made straight away, without having to wait for a new card to be dispatched through the post…
… Genius!
To find out more about New Horizons, please call us on 0151 346 1640
Posted on Friday, April 20th, 2018 at 2:18 pm in Latest News.