Welwyn Garden City, 13 June 2017: PayPoint announced today that community and district heating specialist, Switch2 Energy, has chosen PayPoint’s integrated, multi-channel payments platform, MultiPay, to provide more flexibility for its pay-as-you-go and credit billing customers.
Switch2 is one of the UK's biggest providers of services to community and district heating schemes, which provide affordable, low carbon heat to homes and businesses connected to the heat network from a centralised source. This efficient process replaces the need for a boiler in each property. The company has pioneered modern pay-as-you-go smart meters to provide a transparent, fair and customer friendly heat prepayment system for residents.
MultiPay enhances the level of service for residents using Switch2's pay-as-you-go smart meters to manage their heat usage and payments. Top-up payments are now processed faster and residents have a choice to pay for their heat in a way that suits them, whether that's over the phone or at one of over 29,000 local stores across the UK.
Kirsty Lambert, Director of Switch2 said: “Our new generation pay-as-you-go meters have transformed the experience of energy prepayment and made it an option of choice for many residents. We're always seeking to improve our customer service and our partnership with PayPoint offers greater flexibility, giving residents many ways to pay to suit their lifestyles.”
As payments experts, spanning decades of tech-led innovation, PayPoint is uniquely able to provide a single, integrated solution across multiple payment channels. MultiPay gives customers the flexibility to choose to pay using the most convenient method at the most convenient time – by credit and debit card using their mobile phone, tablet or PC, on PayPoint’s tailored app, or in cash at any of the 29,000 convenience stores in PayPoint’s UK retail network.
Lewis Alcraft, Commercial Director at PayPoint, added: “MultiPay is a complete multi-channel payments solution that combines our unrivalled network of convenience stores with a full range of digital payment channels. Using MultiPay, organisations such as Switch2, can be accessible to their customers wherever they are.” Alcraft continued: “Consumer payment and shopper behaviour is changing and businesses that embrace technology are at the heart of this change. Offering more choice and flexibility to customers is essential to keep modern life moving and to drive businesses forward.”
MultiPay has been developed to be completely modular, meaning that service providers have the freedom to implement specific payment channels as required. Our competitive rates also mean that organisations could save substantial costs on their cash transaction fees. For more information on MultiPay visit www.paypoint.com/multipay
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NOTES TO EDITORS
ABOUT PAYPOINT
We operate market leading national networks across 40,400 convenience stores in the UK and Romania so that our customers are always close to a PayPoint store. At these locations, as well as at home or on the move, people use us to better control their household finances, make essential payments and use in-store services, like parcel drop and collect.
Our UK network contains more branches than all banks, supermarkets and Post Offices together, putting us at the heart of communities for over 10 million regular weekly customers.
We have a proven track record of decades of tech-led innovation, providing retailers with tools that attract customers into their shops. Our recently launched PayPoint One platform offers EPoS, card payments and PayPoint services, and is designed to help retailers run their whole store from one device.
Coupled with our industry-leading solutions, we provide a first class service to the customers of over 1,500 clients - utility companies, retailers, transport firms, mobile phone providers, government and more.
We are on and offline; providing for payments by cash, card including contactless; retail, phone and digital; at home, work and whilst out and about from Land’s End to the Highlands and Islands – helping to keep modern life moving.
Multichannel payments
MultiPay is our multichannel payment service, offering consumer service providers a ready-made solution for their full range of payments via app, web, phone, text and IVR, complementing our cash in store services.
Clients benefit from streamlining their consumer payment processing and transaction routing in a seamlessly integrated and cost effective solution. The services are available either as a full portfolio or by the client’s choice of preferred channels, including our app which has a 4 star rating on the Google Play and Apple App Stores. Clients can choose to access our services as a full outsourced model or by linking their own digital solutions to our MultiPay payment suite.
MultiPay is particularly targeted to serve the rollout of smart meters within the energy market. For example, our service has helped Utilita to become the fastest growing, challenger prepay energy supplier and we have also signed several other energy companies, including SSE, our first Big 6 energy client. Among other relevant sectors, MultiPay is available to the local authority and social housing sectors through a framework with Procurement for Housing.
Retail networks
In the UK, our network includes over 29,200 local shops including Co-op, Spar, Sainsbury’s Local, Tesco Express and thousands of independent outlets. These outlets are quick and convenient places to make energy meter prepayments, bill payments, benefit payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport ticket payments, TV licence payments, cash withdrawals and more.
Our Romanian network continues to grow profitably. We have more than 11,300 local shops, helping people to make cash bill payments, money transfers, road tax payments and mobile phone top-ups. Our clients include all the major utilities and telcos and many other consumer service companies.
In the UK, our Collect+ network offers parcel collection and return services in over 6,100 convenient outlets. Customers use Collect+ for their parcels from major retailers including Amazon, eBay, ASOS, New Look, John Lewis, House of Fraser, M&S and Very. The Collect+ brand is jointly owned with Yodel.
The UK network also includes over 4,100 LINK branded ATMs, and 10,000 of our terminals enable retailers to accept debit, credit and contactless payments, including Apple Pay. We operate over 4,100 Western Union agencies in the UK and Romania for international and domestic money transfers.