Stop-FileService Allows Billers to Block Problematic E-payments

Automated Service Delivers Easy Solution for Unwanted Payments

Billers and payment receivers want their payments to come in on time and post dependably. Well, that’s what they want most of the time, but when accepting a payment creates unwanted obligations, legal difficulties, or other inconveniences, that payment must be returned to the sender.

In the past, this has required a manual, resource-draining effort, even for electronic payments, but now the MasterCard RPPS Stop-File Service, introduced in early 2008 allows billers and payment receivers to automatically bounce unwanted electronic payments right back to the sender without ever seeing them, much less processing the returns.

“The mortgage, collections, and insurance industries are obvious candidates for our Stop-File Service,” says Tom Carey, senior business leader, Sales and New Business Development, MasterCard Worldwide, “but really, anytime a biller has a set of accounts for which any incoming payment is a mistake of some sort, the Stop-File Service can provide a time- and money-saving resource.”

Just Give Us the File

Developed as a module of the MasterCard RPPS Account Conversion Technology and leveraging that service’s platform, whose performance has been near flawless, the Stop-File Service offers a very simple solution conceptually.

“Billers simply give us a list of accounts, with appropriate account information, that they do not wish to accept payments for,” says Darlene Lohman, product leader, MasterCard RPPS Product Management. “All of their electronic payments coming through MasterCard RPPS are run against this list, and any matches are rejected back to the payment originator. We append a special code that lets the originator know why the payment was rejected, and the originator can then inform its customers.”

Billers can update the stop-file list as often as they wish. “Most billers typically update it whenever they run their accounts receivable process,” Lohman says.

Less Work, Reduced Costs

In a paper environment – and in an electronic environment that is not using the Stop-File Service – billers have to wait for a payment to arrive and react to it in order to reject it. The process can be labor intensive, and like any manual process, it is not only costly, but prone to error.

“In some industries – say, the mortgage or loan industry – a payment accepted in error can cause the biller some pain,” says Carey. “If a company is about to begin legal proceedings – a foreclosure, for example – and a payment is posted, even a partial payment, it effectively resets the legal clock to zero. The biller is forced to once again wait the mandated time period after receipt of the last payment before initiating action.”

Worse, such a scenario could set into motion a train of customer service issues that incur additional expense.

“With the Stop-File Service, though, the biller is ahead of the curve, never sees the payment, and doesn’t have to worry about inadvertent acceptance,” says Lohman.

Defect Prevention

The Stop-File Service adds yet another important defect-prevention tool to the MasterCard RPPS payment optimization toolbox.

“As we noted at the 2007 MasterCard RPPS symposium, the electronic payments industry is moving into the era of optimization,” says Carey. “With a large volume of payments now coming to billers electronically, it is critical that we get the defects out, moving our network from a repair model to a prevent model.”

Joining the extraordinarily successful MasterCard RPPS Account Conversion Technology and the recently launched Electronic Exceptions Service, the Stop-File Service helps our customers completely avoid problems, so they never have to worry about solving them.

For more information, please contact contact MasterCard RPPS Sales and New Business Development at 800-535-2130 or at rpps_sales@mastercard.com.