Our customers typically look to get the best value from our solutions as quickly as possible. Below are the ways that our existing customers have implement our solutions to give their business the quickest return and to improve their customer interaction, flows and processes.
1 Account Validation
Our customers use our service primarily to validate account numbers, which allows them to streamline, correct and to enhance the data they collect from their clients. At Apply Financial we maintain the account number formats (often multiple per country) that we can validate and convert those into the standard format for the country. This allows our customers to implement our Validate API and to dramatically improve their customer interaction and their STP by cleaning payment details at the point of entry.
The customer interaction is improved significantly by asking the client for the details they have and then by deriving the details that you require for the payment from it. For example when making a payment to the UK if the user gives you the sort code and account number we can automatically generate the IBAN. Conversely if you wish to make domestic payments in the UK then you can change a setting and make the UK recommendations domestic and then if the user gives you the IBAN we’ll return the sort code and account number (Incidentally in the UK we support more than 5 formats and convert them all into the correct formats for international or domestic payments in the UK).
2 Correspondents
Our API has access to our global database of correspondent details, these can be retrieved either for the beneficiary, for the originator or for all correspondents for the beneficiary and originator or as a best route. This has allowed our customers (across all customer types) to streamline their cross border payments and to provide their back office and payments staff with all the up to date (this data is updated daily) information to quickly and accurately make SWIFT payments.
3 Payment Reason Codes
As more countries have introduced the need to a reason for the payment to be stated when sending a payment and compliance have tightened their requirements. Our customers have used this feature integrated into their platform to ensure they collect valid reason codes and data. This improves STP and reduces the number of payment rejections and charge backs.
4 Payment Network Membership
A number of our customers are trying to make payments at a particular T+ date and to ensure they reduce the cost by using the cheapest preferred network. We carry this domestic data for a number of countries, in particular the US, Europe and the UK. This data set tells our clients which network they can make the payment over so they can be sure to meet the time and cost requirements of domestic payments.
5 Holiday Data
This is a call is being looked at by a number of clients to ensure they can make the payment on the day that they commit to and that their clients realise that due to holidays their payment may not be able to be made on a certain day.