banking and payments

Banking and Payments

The ERA Payments team helps our clients reduce the costs of the many ways of taking and making payments.

We can help reduce the fees paid for accepting card payments; and for handling, transporting and processing cash as well as in the more “traditional” banking elements. We can review expense management, including Payment Cards.

A little more information

Are you really sure that the payment services your business uses are competitively-priced, the most-effective they might be and, as far as possible, future-proofed?

Any project we undertake considers those three aspects as a matter of course. The various providers do not really publish meaningful prices and most services are effectively subject to bespoke negotiation. Our team members are from financial management backgrounds – and have negotiated in executive and managerial roles for those very suppliers. So they know the opportunities, understand the options and have a detailed overview of the various markets.

The case studies demonstrate the range of clients we have worked for – and crucially every business has payment needs.

Cost areas include:

• Merchant Card Fees
• Cash in Transit
• Cash Handling
• Cash Processing
• Banking Services
• Payment Cards
• Asset Finance
• Factoring & Invoice Discounting
• Leasing

Banking and Payments reviews

Our reviews can focus on just one or two areas, or we can work to a wider brief. We can focus on purely reducing like-for-like costs or consider alternative ways a business might receive and make payments, process and control physical cash or manage expenses. We can deliver consultancy projects that focus on the unique objectives of a particular business.
Every enterprise receives and makes payments – and sometimes this can be at considerable overall cost. The providers used are nowadays not limited to Banks, but it is certainly common that prices are not publicised, options are not easy to identify and there is a tendency towards inertia in the market-place.

Our reviews typically start with gaining an understanding of what our client does now, in what volumes and at what cost? Normally we also identify what objectives there are beyond pure cost reduction. (These can be wide ranging and may encompass reducing losses from fraud, reducing risks around customer data, or understanding what alternatives exist now or in the future).

The next steps are not typical though, as each depends upon the unique project goals agreed. We might consider process changes or service substitution. We may negotiate with your providers based on our knowledge of what they charge elsewhere or known operational efficiencies they appear not to have passed on. Or we may undertake a full blown competitive tender. Then again it might be none of the above as instead we work to enhance and improve customer interaction. What is common though is that the next steps will be identified and agreed to suit the individual client’s aims, ways of doing business and objectives.

The markets for payments are not “open” and indeed there are cross overs and potential duplications that are not immediately obvious. Our expertise sees us maintain a dynamic overview of competitive pricing within the card acquiring, cash handling industry, banking and expense management industries.

Banking & Payments case studies

Get in touch today to find out more about how ERA can help with your banking and payments.

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