Payment Is Also Customer Interaction

FarPay gathers all payment solutions and integrates them directly into the accounting system. Not only is this convenient and efficient, but it also facilitates new approaches to interact with customers.

The number of means of payment is on the increase. Apple Pay, Mobilepay, Google Pay. This, the founders of the company FarPay had already spotted back in 2014, where the war for the mobile payment market was already fought.

“It was a growing movement during which many new payment solutions saw the light of day. The idea behind FarPay was to develop an all-in-one payment solution for accounting systems, meaning that the companies can settle for one solution instead of making their own integrations to the various means of payment,” Samal Samuelsen explains, CEO & Sales Director at FarPay.

The complete payment solution linked to the accounting system saves the business customers of FarPay manual work as the payments can be automated from sent invoices to recorded payments. Simultaneously, the depth of the integration lets the business customers interact with their customers in new ways.

Payment is also user-interaction

The utility industry is one of those industries that has gladly welcomed FarPay in Denmark. Over the past 40 years, the industry has primarily exclusively charged through Betalingsservice. But with FarPay, the utility companies can frictionlessly integrate other and new payment solutions to their existing system without having to reinvent their accounting. “The integrations to the new means of payment are complex: Credit card payments have to be sent to one gateway in a specific format, the Samal Samuelsen money is received in an CEO & Sales Director account in another forat FarPay mat, and the payment information is sent in a third format. This means that there are many integrations involved. A lot of companies do not have the necessary resources to this. But we make it simple, so both large and small companies can offer multiple payment methods,” Samuelsen explains.

Basically, it is about getting money from a to b. But digital payments contain data, which is also integrated with the rest of the accounting system. Therefore, the payment is often the focal point of customer contact.

“The utility companies are interested in new ways of interacting with their customers: The customer can choose to pay by Mobilepay or credit card, and they can receive information on email or SMS instead of a letter. And the utility company does not have to make any technical changes in their system – they can maintain the system, which they are familiar with,” says Samuelsen.

This does not mean that FarPay recommends one payment solution over the other. The company solely responds to the advantages and disadvantages of the various payment solutions. Based on this, they help customers decide which payment solution is best suited for their customer journey, needs, and brand.

Consider banks as allied

While FarPay already helps nearly 1,000 companies with their payments, they are also soon entering into their first collaboration with a bank.

“When banks advise their business customers about utilising various payment solutions, they typically also help establish contact with Nets, Mobilepay, or other providers of payment solutions, so the business customers can start signing up for agreements. But when it comes to technical integration, the banks are not able to assist the companies. Therefore, we would like to go into the bank and assist their customers with this integration,” Samuelsen explains.

By doing so, the banks play a more significant role in the customer journey – and the business customers can start to receive payments more quickly.

“Instead of just presenting solutions, the banks can refer to how to get them implemented quickly and easily. In this way, the companies can quickly start to make money – and this is also in the interest of the banks,” Samuelsen states.

Facts about FarPay

FarPay gathers all payment solutions in one service, which is integrated directly with the accounting system. This saves time for the companies, saves money for the customers as they can choose the cheapest method of payment, and facilitates a new way of customer interaction. The solution is not dependent on an ERP-system. All it requires is access to customer data and invoice data and can be integrated into all accounting systems. The company has nearly 1,000 business customers – including Ewii, Economic, and Berlingske Medier. Last year, FarPay sent more than 5m invoices to 1.5m recipients and charged more than 10bn Danish Kroner on behalf of their business customers.