section 4: payment processing, billing, and risk

Intuit Financial Services University FIS Bill Pay Certification Training

(Process Date Model)

Section 4: Payment Processing,

Billing, and Risk

Bill Pay Certification

© 2012 Intuit Financial Services All rights reserved. CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY.

Section 4: Processing

Section Objectives

This section prepares you to understand processing details, consumer billing, and possible risks associated with bill pay including potential blocks to bill pay accounts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the finer points of bill pay processing, as required from customer questions and issuesDecide how your consumers are billed for bill payMitigate the two types of bill pay riskSupport consumers if they experience a debit return or a bill pay fraud situation, including a blocked account




Payment Processing




Remittance Methods

FIS uses one of the following two methods to remit payments:

1. Electronic - If the payee is found in the database, the payment is sent out electronically.

• All electronic payments go through the Federal Reserve.

• The payment includes the consumer’s account number with the payee.

• The financial institution sees the standard ACH code/description when received from the Automated Clearing House.

2. Paper Check - If the payee is added manually, the payment is sent out via paper check.

• The paper check is drawn against FIS’ corporate checking account.

• The check is printed with consumer’s name, address, account number, payment date and payment amount. The envelope with the payment has FIS’ address as the return address.

• Reissued paper checks are not debited a second time.

• The paper check is void after 90 days. If the payment is not posted and it is approaching the 90-day mark, a service request is automatically created by FIS.

• A manually added payee can be converted at a later date to an electronic payee, if there is a match in the FIS database.




When setting up a payment, the consumer clicks on a calendar to view the Send On and Deliver By dates which automatically adjust based on the payment method.

Send On Date

For electronic payments:The calendar automatically adjusts the Send On and Deliver By dates three banking business days apart.

For check payments: The calendar automatically adjusts the Send On and Deliver By dates five banking business days apart.

Note: Payments are only processed on days when the Federal Reserve is open for business. Weekends and holidays are grayed out on the calendar.

Send On date - the day that a payment starts to process. FIS begins processing payments at 9:30pm Central Time on this date. Consumers can schedule, edit or cancel the payment through Bill Pay anytime before 9:30 pm Central Time.Note: Consumers can set the Send On date out a year in advance.

Deliver By date - the date that FIS guarantees the payment arrives at the payee. This should be on or before the bill’s due date.




Example #1Due date for the bill: 22nd

Form of Payment: ElectronicLast day a consumer can set up a bill for guarantee-on time arrival: 17th

Funds debited via ACH: 18th or 19th

Example #2Due date for the bill: 18th

Form of Payment: CheckLast day a consumer can set up a bill for guarantee on-time arrival: 11th

Funds debited via ACH: 12th or 15th

1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30

Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat

Schedule Payments - How do I choose the Process Date?




Friday Business

Day

Saturday Sunday Monday Bank

Holiday

Tuesday Business

Day

Sometimes a payment date for a automatic payment falls on a non-processing day. When this occurs FIS processes that payment on the following banking business day.

Processing Automatic Payments

Tip: Advise consumers to check their automatic payments at the beginning of each month and adjust if needed.




• FIS covers any late-payment related charges (up to $50.00) should a payment arrive after its due date, as long as the consumer scheduled the transaction in accordance with FIS’ on time payment guarantee.

• FIS sends the late-payment related charges to the consumer, not the Payee.

Note: This guarantee pertains to Check and Electronic payments; see next page for payment guarantee details on Expedited Payments.

On Time & Secure Payment Guarantees




Payment Guarantees - Expedited Payments




As a provider of "pay anyone" Bill Pay services, FIS recognized the need for implementation of an OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) suspect list analysis solution to identify potential payee suspects. They implemented a procedure for identifying and reporting exact payee name and address matches with the SDN list.

If a match suspect is identified, FIS calls your financial institution with the payee name and associated payments. It is the financial institution’s responsibility to contact that consumer.

Read more on FIS’ OFAC screening solutions on the Client Site at

https://www.diclientsite.com/prodserv/bill_pay_metavante.html

OFAC Compliance




Restrictions on Use




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Billing




The financial institution has the choice to handle billing internally or have FIS bill the consumer. This billing arrangement is set up during the implementation process.

There are two types of fees: monthly fees, and all other fees like debit returns. The financial institution decides if FIS debits the consumer for monthly fees, other fees, or both.

The following applies if FIS is handling the billing:

When does the consumer pay monthly fees?•Between the 1st and the 5th of the month, the consumer sees an ACH debit for the monthly fees in their account history, typically labeled “Bill Payment Service Fee” (this label depends on your processor).

How are the fees routed to the financial institution?•Intuit Financial Services’ invoice, which is processed on the last business day of the month, includes all of FIS’ charges; for example, you may see a New User Setup fee, Per User Fee or Per Item Fee. Note: These may differ on your invoice - it all depends on your contract with FIS. The financial institution decides if they want to use any credit from the general ledger account to reconcile Intuit Financial Services' bill.

When does the financial institution receive the fee revenue?•On the 20th of the month Intuit Financial Services credits or debits the financial institutions’ general ledger account with the consumers' fees.

Consumer Billing




Risk: Debit Returns, Fraud, and Blocks




There are two types of risk with FIS Bill Pay & Presentment.

1. Credit risk:Credit risk is defined as the potential for a payment to get returned. NSF is the most common reason, but any return reason code applies.

Types of Risk

Ways to manage fraud risk:•Be upfront with FIS and their Fraud team about your business model, e.g. let them know if you have a lot of customers in foreign countries.•Know that most often a fraud alert is a false positive.•Understand how FIS manages fraud risk by reading the “FIS Bill Pay Risk Factors and Mitigation” document (found on the Client Site).

Ways to manage credit risk:

• Up-sell, or even require, an overdraft account for all bill pay users.• The FI can decide to pay or return a check or ACH debit from FIS if

funds are not available. If paid, this essentially transfers the risk to your financial institution.

• Talk to your ACH department. They should know how to identify ACH debits and checks coming from FIS. Create procedures for when to return or not return the payment back to FIS. For example, some financial institutions always pay checks or ACH debits from FIS for wealth management customers.

2. Fraud risk:Fraud risk is defined as the potential for a payment to be made fraudulently, i.e. not approved by the bill pay consumer.




FIS uses a risk-based processing model, which means the payment is sent to the payee without verification of funds or confirmation that the account is still open.

Credit Risk – Debit Processing

How are transactions identified?

• The ACH file that FIS sends to the financial institution is identified with FIS’ company ID of M391165550.

• The description that the consumer sees for their bill pay transactions within Internet Banking and on their statements is “Online bill pay” (the financial institution may change the description – limited to 16 characters).




If the financial institution returns an ACH debit or a check back to FIS, FIS places a block on the bill pay account.

Credit Risk – Debit Returns




Below are questions you may hear when supporting consumers whose accounts are blocked because a payment was returned to FIS.

Credit Risk – Blocks




Credit Risk – Expedited Payments

How are debit returns handled for Expedited Payments?

Expedited Payment Debit Return

If FIS’ debit for an expedited payment is returned, the same process that is in place to handle a debit return for a standard payment is followed. To recap:•The Bill Pay account is placed in a Blocked status.•FIS attempts to debit the account a total of 3 times.•The Block remains in affect until 3 days after FIS successfully collects on a re-debit attempt.•After 3 failed attempts, the account goes to collections.•The financial institution is charged for each debit return the amount in their Bill Pay contract.

Convenience Fee NSF

If FIS’ debit attempt on the consumer’s account for the convenience fee is returned, no further attempts are made to collect it.

However, the uncollected convenience fees are deducted from the month-end settlement owed to the financial institution. In addition, the financial institution is charged for one debit return. The consumer’s account is not blocked if the debit return on an Expedited Payment is only for the convenience fee portion.

Expedited payments, as you learned in Section 3, is an add-on feature, so this page may or may not apply for you.




FIS offers a Fraud Management Service that checks all outgoing payments to mitigate fraud exposure. The service includes transaction monitoring, alerting and case management.

Fraud Risk – Fraud Monitoring

Fraud monitoring begins immediately upon implementation, and the system achieves optimum scoring of bill pay activity once 90 days of history has been accumulated by the scoring models. False-positives are more common during this 90-day “learning” period.




When a consumer calls in asking questions about a fraud alert, it’s important to explain the basics and help with troubleshooting.

Fraud Risk – Fraud Alerts




If FIS does block the account because no one can be reached, this information is important to resolve the situation in a timely manner.

Fraud Risk – Blocks




Practical Applications – Payment Processing

1. How does FIS determine how a payment is sent?

2. How many days does the consumer need to leave for processing?

• Check payments

• Electronic payments

3. Today is Feb 1st and you have a bill that is due on the Feb 13th. When is the last day you can set up the bill in order for the Payee to receive payment on time for an electronic payment? For a check?

February

Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat

1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12FED. HOLIDAY

13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28




Practical Applications – Payment Processing (cont’d)

4. When does the money come out of the consumer’s account and when is the Payee paid?

5. When can the consumer cancel a payment and how?

6. What are the advantages of using FIS’ consumer billing?

7. Describe the steps FIS takes if the financial institution returns a Bill Pay item.

8. How do expedited payment debit returns differ from regular payment debit returns?




Section Objectives - RECAP

In this section, you learned how to:

Explain the finer points of bill pay processing, as required from customer questions and issues

Decide how your consumers are billed for bill pay

Mitigate the two types of bill pay risk

Support consumers if they experience a debit return or a bill pay fraud situation, including a blocked account

section 4: payment processing, billing, and risk

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