Becoming a Visa Merchant

Visa & Your Business

Why Prefer Visa?/Profit Calculator

Merchant Best Practices

Accepting Visa Purchasing Cards

Commercial Cards

Where to Use Visa Purchasing Cards

Small Business Site

New Technologies

Visa ePay

VisaPhone

Visa Point-of-Sale
Signage Ordering Online

Visa ePay

A Fully Electronic Solution for Biller Payment Delivery

Visa ePay - a fully electronic, bi-directional solution for payment delivery - can help your business reduce costs, streamline operations, and receive better payment service as more and more of your customers choose electronic ways to pay.

What is Visa ePay?
Learn about this fully electronic system for bill payment processing.

How Visa ePay works
Follow a typical Visa ePay transaction.

The value of Visa
Compare Visa ePay to current "electronic" bill payment systems.

How Visa ePay benefits your business
Find out how Visa ePay can guarantee timely, accurate, and cost-effective payment delivery.

Participating Financial Institutions
Find out who you can speak with to sign up for ePay and visit their websites.

Any questions?
Click here for more information.

What is Visa ePay?
In today's electronic bill payment environment, processing is often unpredictable, inconsistent, and costly. To better benefit billers, Visa partnered with financial institutions to develop Visa ePay.

Visa ePay is a fully electronic, bi-directional remittance service. It links consumers, billers, and their financial institutions to make the exchange of funds fully electronic from end to end - even when payment adjustments and error corrections are necessary.

Visa ePay means faster, safer, more economical payment service, plus Visa ePay offers your business more accurate payment delivery and more reliable access to complete accounts receivable information.

How Visa ePay works
Visa ePay electronically links your business to your customer. It automates bill payment delivery and provides the operating regulations, technical support, standardization, and service infrastructure necessary to ensure an environment of confidence for billers and consumers.

1. Your business sends invoices to your customers.

2. Your customers tell their financial institutions to pay electronically using your Visa ePay biller I.D.

3. Your customers' financial institutions electronically deposit the payments and A/R information into your account. Your financial institution sends any necessary returns or corrections back to your customers' financial institutions - which send them to your customers electronically.

4. The payment is deposited into your account - and good funds are available without delay.

The Value of Visa

Current "electronic" remittance processing:	Visa ePay:
Limited connectivity	Comprehensive connectivity and processing solutions utilizing Visa's credit card processing system
Limited systems capabilities relying on manual processes	End-to-end bi-directional processing system
Lack of industry-wide standards	End-to-end standards and operating regulations
Unpredictable service quality and increased customer problems	Reliable service quality and greater customer satisfaction
Costly, labor-intensive operations	Cost-effective electronic environment
Costly, time-consuming biller file set-up and identification	Turnkey biller file set up and identification
Multiple exception items	Few exception items
Limited control of risk	Full electronic controls

How Visa ePay benefits your business
Electronics will continue to reshape remittance services far into the next century. With Visa ePay in place, your business will be ready to take advantage of new service opportunities - quickly and economically - as they emerge. Through Visa ePay, your remittance processing center is electronically linked to your customers. For your business, this end-to-end electronic connection means:

Guaranteed payment
For every Visa ePay payment, your customers' financial institutions secure funds from their accounts before sending payment orders to your financial institution. This authorization and settlement of transactions in good funds means payment assurance and one-time processing that no conventional remittance approach can match.

More timely and accurate payment
Visa ePay adds speed and efficiency to the bill payment process by replacing "check and list" items, exception items, and labor-intensive procedures with fully electronic transactions - so your funds are available without delay.

Fewer exception items
Today, "electronic" bill payment programs typically stay electronic for only 30% of the transactions initiated by customers. The rest end up as check and list items - which generate costly and time-consuming exception items for billers. Check and list items can cost a biller twice as much to process as agent/walk-in payments and ten times more than pre-authorized debit and standard check payments. Visa ePay changes all of this with an end-to-end solution that keeps each transaction electronic from the time it is initiated by your customer to the time funds are credited to your account.

Significant cost savings
By eliminating check and list items, exception items, and check processing fees, Visa ePay makes remittance processing more cost-effective - especially if you manage a large volume of payments. Visa ePay also helps avoid customer service issues and costs related to exception items. And, if a transaction does require research, Visa ePay reduces your research costs by putting easy-to-track, data-rich transactions at your fingertips.

Paper-free adjustments and corrections
Visa ePay delivers a fully standardized two-way system plus high-quality transaction data. These features let you send returns and corrections back to your customers electronically - eliminating the need for paper-based labor-intensive procedures - and ensure that exception items can be repaired in one billing cycle.

A single sign-up process to tap volume from all payment originators
When you sign up for Visa ePay, your financial institution enters your data into a Universal Biller File (UBF) which is distributed to all Visa ePay payment originators to give them a reliable way to identify you and the account number formats you prefer. The UBF also lets you tailor Visa ePay to your needs by alerting participants to the services and processing options you support.

General Services Administration approved
Visa ePay is being piloted by the General Services Administration (GSA). The GSA is encouraging businesses to receive payments electronically today. Effective January 1, 1999, the government will mandate that their vendors comply with electronic requirements.

Electronic invoice presentment (available 1998)
Visa ePay will offer the ability to send full-detail, image-based electronic invoices to your customers who participate in a PC-based electronic bill payment service. This service will provide your business with complete control of the look and feel of your invoices - and any associated marketing or informational content - without paper, envelopes, postage, or manual mailing procedures.

Any questions?
For more information, including a free video, contact:
Visa at 1-888-396-4040 extension 271. Visa ePay is not an Internet credit card payment solution. For Internet processing solutions, please contact your financial institution.