There is general agreement that consumers expect to be able choose from a range of payment methods to pay for their goods and services. (See Safety Insurance case study.)  Businesses are undecided as to: 1) which payment channels to provide, and 2) whether to do this in-house or to outsource the process.

Third party service suppliers, such as TransCentre, provide an attractive solution for companies wanting to minimise the risks and costs of offering multi-channel payment options. TransCentra's believe that the transaction costs - figure below - are only half the story.

Transaction collection costs

The other, often forgotten, cost is the annual support costs of each channel which TransCentra estimate to be around $90k. So for a company offering nine channels, the total costs will be over $800k per annum.

In the last 12 months TransCentra, who are one of the US's largest e-invoicing and cheque collection service providers, have had companies start by taking this paper based service because the multi-channel option reduces the cost and risk of adding other payment channels. Furthermore, the risk of choosing a payment channel that does not take off is eliminated.

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Offering multiple payment channels for collections is here to stay, the only question is just how you do it.