Trenitalia c2c Manage Over £1M of Customer Refunds During the COVID-19 Lock-Down

A Smart Replacement for Printing Cheques

Due to the lockdown, existing processes for creating, signing, and fulfilling cheques would have been a logistical nightmare with increased risk and complexity. Fortunately, Dave Markwell, c2c’s Finance Systems Administrator, was already looking at how the company could modernise its cheque payments.

He explains: 

 “Whilst researching potential alternatives to printing cheques, I found the PTX Payout solution. It ticked every box in terms of the features that we needed. As we were using PTX for Bacs, we had the utmost confidence in Bottomline. PTX is linked to our bank accounts which means we could leverage existing approval and authorisation workflows. This was a real timesaver and accelerated change without compromising on security."

Verifying Refund Claims

c2c calculates the value of any cheque refund due to be paid as well reconcile each refund against a list of valid tickets. The refund amount is sent to each customer via email along with a unique reference number and a link to a branded online data capture form.

The customer enters details into the form, including their bank account and sort code. PTX Payouts uses the name and address of the payee along with the bank details submitted by the customer to verify ownership of the bank account. Dave comments, “We are using the highest security settings in PTX for data validation. This gives us confidence that we are sending the right refund to the right customer whilst minimising the risk of error or financial crime, causing problems when cheques are cashed.”

Any claims that are rejected by PTX are reviewed by the customer relations team who may ask for further information before manually adding these to PTX. This ensures that data errors are picked up and highlights any potential attempts to bypass validation checks.

Creating the Batch Payment

PTX creates a daily batch payment file from the verified claims. Dave adds, “The payment file flows through the same automated, secure authorisation and approvals that we use for a regular Bacs payment. Using these PTX workflows was a huge timesaver as we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel.” From start to finish, the project took around a month.

This included web form design work, testing, and verifying the bank could process the payments.

“Pre-COVID this project would probably have taken 2-3 months. We really appreciate going live in less than half that time as it meant that we could start processing the growing volume of claims that we were facing during the lockdown. The quicker we went live, the faster we could relieve the pressure on the customer relations team too,”

Improving the Customer Experience

c2c usually processes around 10-20 refunds per week. Since going live with the PTX Payout solution, it has processed over 1,400 claims. “With volumes growing 700% in the first 30 days, we simply could not have coped without it. In the last month alone, we processed over £1m of refunds. This shows how vital it was that we had something that worked accurately and efficiently,” adds Dave.

There are advantages for the customer, as Dave states, “We are delivering a better customer experience as PTX enables the money to be paid directly into their bank account, rather than asking customers to wait for a cheque to arrive and then take it to the bank. It is more cost-effective for us too, and our investment in this solution represents value for money. We also don’t need to worry about reissuing lost cheques or those that haven’t been cashed for 6 months.”

As a cloud-based solution, PTX enables c2c to work remotely and securely. “It has cut a lot of manual effort out of the refund process without sacrificing governance, security and fraud prevention controls. PTX frees us up from planning cheque runs to coincide with when signatories are in the office, and it gives us a huge amount of flexibility and agility,” adds Dave.

"The PTX Payout solution was definitely the right choice. We plan to migrate other cheque payments onto the same platform, which will bring further benefits. I would recommend PTX to any company looking for a scalable, cloud-based alternative to printing cheques."

Dave Markwell | Finance Systems Administrator | Trenitalia C2C