Featured image for Autodeposit: Your open door to revenues blog post
Interac e-Transfer|Payments

Autodeposit: Your open door to revenues

2 minute read
2 minute read
Linkedin
Facebook
Twitter

In a previous post we talked about one of Interac e-Transfer’s useful new features, Request Money, which allows users to send digital requests for money to any individual or business with a Canadian bank account – a feature that improves cash flow and reduces processing costs for businesses and their clients and customers.

In cases where Request Money is not being used, however – for example, if a business is sending invoices and then allowing customers to pay on their own initiative, numerous digital transfers of money to a single small organization can create their own overhead. Each e-Transfer has to be accepted individually when a notification is received, and while this process has been designed to be fast and convenient, answering multiple security questions and accepting multiple payments can be time-consuming – especially for smaller firms.

This is where our second recent feature, Autodeposit, comes in. Autodeposit allows a user to register a particular email address to an account; when any e-Transfer is received via that email address, the money will be automatically deposited into the specified bank account, without requiring any action from the recipient (notifications will still be received, of course, for information and tracking purposes). Not only does this save time for the recipient, but senders no longer have to specify security questions and answers for such transfers.

This feature offers several benefits for small to medium-sized businesses:

  1. Secure: As always with Interac e-Transfer, no private financial information (like a bank account number) needs to accompany the request, but neither do senders and recipients have to trade security questions and answers – eliminating a security risk to the extent that such combinations may be re-used for other transactions.
  2. Trackable: Notifications are still provided to both parties, providing certainty without requiring additional action – and through online banking a company can easily access a comprehensive list of transfers it has received.
  3. Easy-to-use: Because transfers are automatically deposited, no action is required from the recipient. The money just flows in. And senders don’t need to specify security questions and answers, making the process easier for everyone.
  4. Fast: Waiting for a cheque to arrive and then get cleared is no longer needed, and the timeframe between a customer deciding to pay and a business receiving the money in its account shrinks to almost nothing: the customer hits “send”, and the money is deposited into the account.
  5. Cost-reducing: Cheque-processing effort vanishes, and so does the (much smaller) effort required to accept individual e-Transfers. Autodeposit helps open the door for revenue flow.

So how are Canadian businesses using this feature?

  • Vendors (even the smallest businesses like personal services) are providing payment-focused email addresses to their clients to improve their cash flow and encourage simplified payment via e-Transfer.
  • Organizations are using it with partners to smooth the process of paying for shared-cost projects.
  • Businesses with more than one banking relationship are using it to swiftly transfer money between financial institutions as needed.

Autodeposit is just one more way we’ve improved the Interac e-Transfer experience, reducing friction by focusing on how easily and how fast small and medium-sized businesses can get paid for the valuable goods and services they deliver to their customers every day.

Related Content