Source: Fiserv
The Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the ACH payments business of The Clearing House Payments Company, today announced that Fiserv BANKLINK, a leading provider of treasury management solutions, has adopted EPN STP 820 to facilitate straight-through-processing for business-to-business payments.
BANKLINK adopted EPN STP 820 for its iLINK product, a suite of Web-based cash management products for financial institutions and their corporate customers. iLINK enables institutions to provide a full suite of payments capability including remote deposit, controlled disbursements, wire transfer, ACH origination, internal transfer, cash concentration, check management, stop payment initiation, imaging and loan reporting. BANKLINK is a unit of Fiserv, Inc., (NASDAQ:FISV), a provider of information technology products and services with more than 16,000 clients.
"EPN STP 820 will make it easier and simpler for customers to use the powerful cash management features in iLINK by ensuring they continue to have ACH addenda capabilities that support the needs of their small business customers, as a part of our flexible, easy to use iLINK ACH module," said Kathleen Dwyer, CTP, AAP, and ACH Product Manager of BANKLINK. "The EPN STP 820 standard will be good for our customers by simplifying the techno-speak of Financial EDI into an easy-to-use, customer friendly online banking tool and at the same time enabling them to streamline the process of executing straight-through-processing of business-to-business payments."
EPN STP 820 rationalizes the complexity of the ANSI 820 payment standard by defining the required data elements to be included with the payment. EPN STP 820 specifies up to 10 required data elements depending on the type of payment, such as customer name, account number, gross invoice amount and amount paid, to be included with the electronic payment for as many invoices as are being paid. Developed from extensive research and working with industry groups, software providers, banks and businesses, the EPN 820 standard is approved by ASC X12 F.
"BANKLINK's adoption of EPN STP 820 will help businesses initiate more electronic payments and move away from the more costly method of payments by paper check," said Rossana Salaris, Senior Vice President of The Clearing House Payments Company, responsible for EPN. "EPN is committed to working with industry participants to develop solutions that make electronic payments as easy as writing a check."
The EPN STP 820 standard addresses one of the key obstacles of initiating and receiving electronic business-to-business payments: the lack of a single standard format for remittance information. The AFP Payments Advisory Group, which represents a broad cross-section of corporate treasury and finance professionals, has said the EPN STP 820 "appears to address key barriers to the efficient delivery of remittance information with electronic payments if properly implemented."
A Federal Reserve study showed that of the 3.9 billion business-to-business remittance payments each year, only 14% are executed electronically. EPN's internal research found that only 32% of electronic payments could be posted automatically. EPN STP 820 removes barriers that should improve these percentages.
"EPN STP 820 was created to increase the volume of business-to-business payments by identifying the key data elements that most businesses need to automatically post a payment to its accounts receivable system," Salaris said. "We're pleased that BANKLINK, a leading provider of cash management solutions, is adopting the EPN STP 820 standard."