Aliaswire Announces the Sale of Its Payvus Business

BURLINGTON MA, June 1, 2023 –Today Aliaswire, Inc., a leading provider of innovative payment and financial technology services, announced that Onboard Partners, LLC has acquired its Payvus small business credit card issuing and capital management business. The acquisition of the Payvus business, technology and intellectual property will expand Onboard’s already successful financial services advisory, marketing and portfolio management capabilities with an innovative new platform that is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of small business owners.

“We have worked closely with the Aliaswire team as a strategic partner since they first launched the Payvus solution and we both agreed that continuing to build the business as part of the Onboard platform would significantly accelerate its growth and reach,” said Scott Shaw, CEO of Onboard. “More importantly, in leveraging the innovative Payvus platform and Onboard’s deep domain expertise, we can bring a compelling new offering to our diverse array of partners and clients that will open up new revenue and portfolio management opportunities in the long underserved small business market.” First launched as a beta product in 2020, Payvus quickly demonstrated that there was a strong market demand for its unique credit offering when it delivered consistent 100% month over month new cardholder acquisition. Working with leading go-to-market partners that represent acquirers, issuing banks, independent technology providers and service providers, Payvus is now available to millions of small businesses who need access to short term revolving credit and better tools for managing their cash flow. With its innovative and proprietary underwriting, flow of funds and capital management platform, Payvus manages a portfolio of small business cards that spend above the industry average while maintaining a loss rate that is a fraction of a typical portfolio. “We’re excited that Onboard will provide Payvus with a new foundation to continue to innovate and grow,” said Jed Rice, CEO of Aliaswire. “Given our long-standing relationship with Onboard and their unmatched expertise in this space, this is the perfect home for the business and the team. We are confident that Onboard will give Payvus what it needs to reach its full potential.” “All of our focus now will be on our market-leading flagship business, DirectBiller®,” continued Rice. “Over the past three years the DirectBiller team has consistently delivered 50% year-over-year revenue growth and increased our total payment transaction volume by over 230%. I am excited for the next phase of our growth as a more focused and nimble company.” About Aliaswire, Inc. Aliaswire is a fintech company based in Boston with a history of innovation in payments. The company supports leading financial institutions and their over 800 clients with bill pay through DirectBiller®. For more information, visit https://www.aliaswire.com/. Media contact: Jeanne Murphy jmurphy@aliaswire.com 617-393-5356

Behind the Idea: Aliaswire

THE FINTECH TIMES, SEPTEMBER 29, 2022 – If you have not heard of Aliaswire, it’s because they operate behind the scenes, working exclusively through banks to modernize business’ billing and payment practices. Today, the company’s DirectBiller platform powers digital billing and payments for more than 800 businesses and processes nearly $6 billion annually.

With DirectBiller, banks can offer their commercial clients a modern, custom-branded billing and payment experience for their customers. In 2021, the company saw a 400% increase in the number of payments made on DirectBiller and a 70% increase in the total dollar value of payments processed vs. 2020. The biggest drivers of those increases were from major utilities, insurance companies and the public sector.

Aliaswire‘s CEO Jed Rice is a payments industry vet. Before taking over at Aliaswire in February 2020, he had successful stints at PayPal, mobile payment provider Paydiant (acquired by PayPal) and edocs (acquired by Oracle), one of the early innovators in e-billing, payments and online account management.

What has been the traditional company response to financial technology innovations nationally?

There is a lot written about fintechs disrupting banks and other incumbents. Many see it as a necessary part of how innovation happens in financial services. Aliaswire’s focus has been to drive innovation by working with the existing players in financial services ecosystem, e.g., banks, merchant service providers. Despite all the disruption seen in the last decade, the incumbents still control the levers of finance, and we believe we can make more meaningful change happen more quickly, by working through these existing industry players. At the same time, we are also helping banks fend off competition from fintechs by accelerating the bank’s ability to deliver new innovation to their clients.

How has this changed over the past few years?

In the payments space in particular, the role of banks has changed quite a bit. For years, online bill payment was the domain of banks, an extension of the banks’ moves into online banking. Consumers and businesses could go to their bank and pay all their bills in one place. But as payments have become a more integral part of the customer experience, businesses want to have more control. Aliaswire has enabled banks to offer that service to their commercial customers without disintermediating those relationships. This gives the business more control over the billing and payment experience without taking on all the required investment and domain expertise.

Is there anything that has created a culture of change inside the company?

The payments landscape has changed dramatically over the years. Our banking partners provide essential stability and security to the payments ecosystem. By default, they are not built for maximum agility and flexibility.

Aliaswire is a fintech focused on creating simple, intuitive, always-on payment experiences. Our job is to be nimble; to help banks adjust to the needs of the payments market without having to upend their own culture to do it. In that regard, I see Aliaswire as an important driver of change for our banking partners.

What fintech ideas have been implemented?

I think our business model and value proposition are part of three broad fintech themes. One, digital impacts all aspects of people’s lives, and especially payments and financial services. Everything we do is focused on enabling more modern digital payment experiences that remove friction for all involved. Two, and related to that, business experiences increasingly have to match our consumer experiences. This is especially true in payments and finance. And three, there is a big focus on the speed of payments. How can we accelerate transactions for both the consumer/business paying a bill and the organization validating and reconciling it? Aliaswire is working with its clients and partners, e.g., Nacha, Citi, Mastercard, etc., to enable faster, more secure account validation to speed payment cycle time and remove friction from the process.

What benefits have these brought?

Digital has minimized the friction in the payment process – for customers paying bills and businesses receiving them. That reduces billing and processing costs for the businesses and makes for more satisfied and loyal customers. Modern, digital payment capabilities enable businesses to meet their customers where they are, for customers to pay via the method they prefer. That’s an important differentiator for those businesses. Equally important, we’re enabling stronger relationships between banks and their commercial customers and creating competitive barriers against fintechs and other financial institutions. Banks are re-asserting their role as the trusted financial advisor to their commercial clients by helping them adapt to changing market needs.

Do you see any other industry challenges on the horizon?

Specific to payments, customer expectations for modern digital experiences will continue to rise and that puts pressure on businesses (and their banking partners) to innovate to meet customers where they are. That means more embedded payment experiences built into customer relationships, new payment channels and methods that make it as seamless as possible, and faster processing times.

Fraud and security will always be challenges in the world of payments and finance – for both banks and their clients. We know bad actors will continue to get more sophisticated and we in the industry must always stay ahead of that.

Can these challenges be aided by fintech?

Yes, on both counts.

Aliaswire, like many others in the fintech industry, was founded to modernize financial experiences. We can help banks and businesses keep pace and move more quickly to meet their customers’ demand for intuitive digital experiences.

Fintech is addressing fraud with new security tools and practices such as real-time bank account validation. These types of best practices not only protect all the parties in a transaction, they also take friction out of the overall process and increase the confidence of both billers and their customers.

Final thoughts….

Banks are under attack from fintechs because fintechs are generally better positioned to offer the banks’ business customers more modern, digital experiences. Billing and payments in particular have become critical customer touchpoints — one of the most important in recurring billing relationships. By leveraging the modern bill payment capabilities of fintechs, banks can help their commercial clients address this emerging need, and to be a more strategic partner to them. Aliaswire is helping banks address their competitive threats and fortify their position with their commercial clients. In doing so we also provide them with profitable new revenue streams. That’s how we will have the greatest impact.

Aliaswire DirectBiller Modernizes Billing and Payment for Utilities

Reports 337% increase in payments from utility companies over past 12 months

One utility is processing over one million payments per month

BURLINGTON, MA, SEPTEMBER 1, 2022Aliaswire, a provider of bill payment and credit solutions for businesses and banks, today announced new capabilities for utility clients in its DirectBiller platform and reported impressive growth in the number of payments being processed by utilities. The new features address the growing need for utilities to meet customer expectations for more modern and convenient payment methods, while also reducing their operating costs.

The company saw a 337% increase in the number of payments processed by utility companies on its DirectBiller platform over the last 12 months, with one natural gas provider processing over one million payments per month and continuing to grow volume at 12% month-over-month.

“When you have recurring billing relationships like utilities, the billing and payment experience becomes a critical touchpoint. In many cases, it may be the only one a utility has with a customer each month,” said Jed, Rice, CEO of Aliaswire. “Not only does that experience have a huge impact on customer satisfaction, but it can also create big operational inefficiencies without proficient systems and processes in place, as finance teams are then forced to manually handle payment receipt and reconciliation.”

DirectBiller optimizes the billing and payment experience for residential, commercial and non-consumption utility customers. The platform manages the entire end-to-end process from billing through payment reconciliation and encourages on-time payments by providing easy and secure ways for customers to receive and pay their utility bills. DirectBiller enables utilities to consolidate all payment channels on a single platform and integrates seamlessly with utilities’ ERP systems and their banks’ treasury management systems to streamline payment reconciliation.

Key features in DirectBiller for Utilities

Bill Payment

  • Members of the same household can log in separately to make payments against their shared account
  • Multiple payment options (web, mobile, text, CSR, IVR, kiosk)
  • One-time payment and auto pay
  • Automated payment reminders
  • Multilingual IVR service that follows the same payment flows as web and mobile experiences
  • CSRs can provide one-time payment links via text or email to unenrolled customers
  • Customers can pay directly on DirectBiller’s hosted payer portal, or the payment experience can be embedded within a utility’s existing payment site via single sign-on or API
  • Real-time posting lets the utility and customer know immediately when payments have posted to better manage service levels and terminations

Support for Multiple Divisions

For utilities with multiple lines of business, DirectBiller can support separate payment flows and websites. Reporting can be provided at the division level as well as a single consolidated view at the corporate level.

Flexible Card Processing and Fee Management

  • Support for different fee models for residential, commercial and non-consumption lines of business
  • Patented technology streamlines daily net settlement of surcharges, convenience fees.
  • Competitive “cost plus” interchange pricing, including Level 2/3 processing

Support for Non-Consumption Business

  • Full PDF presentment of complex and multi-page invoices
  • Multiple invoices can be grouped into a single payment transaction or processed individually
  • Payers can apply credit memos to invoices and pay net balance due

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About Aliaswire, Inc.

Aliaswire is a fintech company based in Boston with a history of innovation in payments. The company supports leading financial institutions and merchant services providers with bill pay through DirectBiller® and small business credit solutions through Payvus®. For more information, visit https://www.aliaswire.com/.

Media Contact

Tim Walsh, for Aliaswire

timw@walshgroupmarketing.com

617.512.1641

Savings Achieved Through DirectBiller® Real-Time Bank Account Validation Service

Helps billers avoid high costs of new ACH requirements

BURLINGTON, MA, JUNE 8, 2022Aliaswire, a provider of bill payment and credit solutions for businesses and banks, shared early results today from its work with leading banks and their commercial clients to reduce the cost of new ACH bank account validation requirements. Many billers are unprepared for the additional transaction costs triggered by the new regulation, which went into effect in March 2022.

Aliaswire’s DirectBiller bill pay platform has built a large, proprietary database of known bank accounts which it uses to validate transactions instantaneously and at no cost to the biller. In the event an account number is not recognized, Aliaswire draws on Nacha’s Phixius platform to quickly validate the account. Fees are charged only when the Phixius platform is accessed during the validation process. The proprietary database uses platform-wide validation and transaction activity to keep itself up to date.

Most payment service providers have not built a database of validated bank accounts, forcing billers to pay an additional fee on every customer payment they receive, whether that account has been validated before or not. This is especially wasteful for billers with recurring customers such as utilities, insurance carriers, and property management companies. Within the first five months of using DirectBiller’s Real Time Bank Account Validation service, on average billers reduced the number of accounts requiring paid validation from 30% to 10%.

DirectBiller Bank Account Validation Results: Jan. – May 2022

 

First 30 Days

After 150 Days

% of total payments requiring third-party validation, e.g., Phixius

30%*

10%*

Compliant transactions with no delays to processing time

100%

100%

 

*DirectBiller Real-Time Bank Account Validation uses its proprietary database to validate the remaining accounts saving the cost of validation vs. service providers that use third-party services. 

 

In addition to validating accounts, DirectBiller’s Real Time Bank Account Validation service also enables faster payments and reduces returns by eliminating prenote and micro-deposit validation methods and the delays associated with them.

The real-time BAV solution is offered both as a standalone service, and as a standard feature within its DirectBiller platform. DirectBiller equips banks to offer their commercial clients custom-branded billing and payment experiences to their customers. The platform manages the end-to-end process from invoicing through payment reconciliation and integrates with banks’ treasury management systems and their clients’ ERP systems.

“The new account validation requirement enhances the reliability and security of ACH transactions,” said Nirmal Kumar, Chief Technology Officer at Aliaswire. “With DirectBiller BAV, we are able to eliminate the additional costs involved, while providing a future-ready payment infrastructure that delivers increasing efficiency and savings over time, especially for businesses with recurring bills.”

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About Aliaswire, Inc.
Aliaswire is a fintech company based in Boston with a history of innovation in payments. The company supports leading financial institutions and merchant services providers with bill pay through DirectBiller® and small business credit solutions through PayVus®. For more information, visit https://www.aliaswire.com/.

Media Contact
for Aliaswire
Tim Walsh
timw@walshgroupmarketing.com
617.512.1641