Smart new billing service wins top award

An innovative and industry-leading bill payment service - which gives ANZ customers greater visibility and control of what they need to pay, and when - has won a top prize at the 2021 INFINZ awards.

The service, which securely incorporates bills from companies like Spark into ANZ’s goMoney app – won the award for Excellence in Institutional Banking.

“It’s great to see the team win an award like this because it validates the work we’ve been doing to help large companies find a better way to process bill payments,” says ANZ NZ’s Managing Director, Institutional, Stuart McKinnon.

“It’s also an innovation that will help more than a million customers get on top of their bills.”

“Initiatives like this have the potential to dramatically change the financial services landscape.”

Stuart McKinnon, Managing Director, Institutional, ANZ NZ Ltd.

The service is the first time a New Zealand bank is offering customers a bill payment feature of this type and is an important step towards more Open Banking.

“From our research, we know a lot of people struggle to remember when a bill is due, and often forget to pay it on time,” says McKinnon.

“Bringing those bills into our mobile banking app goMoney puts them all in one place and this means a customer can manage them more easily - especially when they might be juggling their everyday expenses.”

HOW IT WORKS

Once a customer agrees to use the new service, their bills are shown in goMoney.

Upcoming payment details and particulars, including how much is due and when, are automatically populated within the app, and it even shows the customer whether there is an existing direct debit or recurring credit card transaction set up.

This ensures payment details are correct, and removes the need for customers to hunt out details like account numbers and references from other apps or emails, which can cause errors.

This simple change in process will help customers retain visibility and control over their finances.

“Research tells us that it’s the small, everyday decisions that have the greatest impact on people’s longer term financial health,” says McKinnon.

“So although it may seem like a relatively minor change to the way we do things, I think it has the potential to make a big difference to many people’s lives.”

HELPS LARGE COMPANIES

The new feature makes managing and paying bills much simpler and more streamlined for customers, but it also has benefits for the companies that adopt it.

In a trial, ANZ discovered that customers using the service paid their bills earlier, on average, than they did prior to having the service.

The difference will be of great benefit to companies aiming to better manage their cash flow, while also reducing the number of missed or late payments that can result in bad debts.

“From talking with these large companies we also know that many of their customers don’t use the correct reference codes when they make a payment online,” says McKinnon.

“This means they have to put a lot of effort into reconciling payments with bills issued – so by pre-populating the payment details, we can avoid this and save them a lot of hassle and cost.”

Bringing the bills directly into goMoney also saves companies the considerable expense of printing and posting millions of bills to customers each year.

WHERE TO FROM HERE

Many large telecommunications, energy, utility and insurance companies could benefit from using the service, with ANZ sharing technical specifications openly.

This collaborative approach is considered critical to supporting development of services like this and broader Open Banking services in New Zealand.

“Initiatives like this have the potential to dramatically change the financial services landscape,” says McKinnon.

“They create the opportunity for banks and other parties to work together openly to harness their combined capabilities, and to empower customers with more choice, control and transparency over the sharing of their financial data with other parties.”

“As the ideas around Open Banking develop in New Zealand and we see new ways of giving consumers greater choice, I think the service we are trialing here has given us some really good insights into the direction we need to take in the future, especially when we collaborate with other businesses,” says McKinnon.

“ANZ has a proven record of protecting customer privacy and keeping their data safe and secure, so it’s only natural we would be at the forefront of this type of innovation.”