The Answer Pay platform
Request to Pay Integration | White label services
Simple, secure, low risk – the future of bill payments is here.
Answer Pay is the keystone of the Request to Pay ecosystem.
Our API manages the identities of participants and securely routes bill payment messages to the correct destinations.
We connect cash collection systems (typically offered by banks) and bill payment applications (such as retail platforms/apps, digital wallets or personal finance managers)
Why use our platform?
Switch on business growth without the hassle of complex regulations, managing data security and multiple connections – we do that for you.
Our Banking as a Service platform enables you to connect within weeks rather than months or years. Get secure, unified connectivity to Request to Pay where you control the user experience.
Rapid Integration
Our platform is pre-certified and provides you an accelerated integration time of less than two weeks
Low Maintenance
Keeping abreast of change requests and security patches is difficult. We maintain compliance of the platform so you don’t have to.
Reach
Coverage is provided across multiple Request to Pay schemes including SEPA R2P and Pay.UK. Connect once, access many.
Digital bill payments have evolved
Request to Pay is a newly introduced messaging protocol that equips payers to bring together and manage all bills in one place. It’s set to transform existing bill payment methods—such as paper invoices or pay by link services—into networked two-way digital dialogues.
Our API gives secure, unified access to financial institutions, enabling the integration of digital invoices and cash collection by bank transfer and powered two-way communication with payers.
Making Request to Pay adoption simple
While RTP is well documented, it’s still not a plug-and-play solution. That’s why Answer Pay—a Pay.UK accredited technical solution provider—developed our Banking as a Service platform.
It installs an extra layer of tooling to allow the RtP protocol to be adopted into existing banking and PSP apps without becoming a drain on internal development teams. Providers can fully outsource the complexity of RtP implementation and the pains of ongoing administration.
Designed to enable rather than replace, services will be fully branded by a PSP allowing them to control KYC, request initiation and management. This means that a biller using an API or portal from their PSP for cash collection today can be empowered to use Request to Pay through that same interface tomorrow reducing any potential friction.
On-demand scalability
Request to Pay is not a ‘fire and forget’ technology implementation. As demand continues to increase across the service, and more and more participants join, the work overhead to manage the connectivity and testing of new entrants can quickly become overwhelming for internal tech teams.
Working with a certified RTP service provider like Answer Pay means that, every time a new party joins the ecosystem, they are onboarded and made available to all the PSP customers of that solution provider. This is critical, as the more participants, the more opportunity for interaction. Answer Pay is able to do this more efficiently than internal teams as it is their core function, and the associated service delivery costs are shared by multiple customers to bring economies of scale.
Keeping up with the global roll-out of RTP standards
Pay.UK has developed a standard focused on the UK. There are different standards emerging in other countries and regions. Of particular interest will be the new European standard given many PSPs operate in a multi-region environment. The good news here is that the UK standard has been constructed with ISO20022 in mind, the same standard that the European Payments Council has used for its ‘SEPA Request to Pay,’ making it easier to communicate between the two.
Request to Pay is a global phenomenon and, as it takes off, the variety of connectivity options are making it easier than ever to be a part of the story. PSPs can leverage technical solution providers like Answer Pay to get the ownership and control of a build-it-yourself model, with faster time to value made possible by partnering.
Get connected to Request to Pay
We step you through the onboarding journey to install Request to Pay:
- Take advantage of our plug and play technology
- Leverage our know-how to fast-track your project
In June 2020, Answer Pay became the first certified provider of Request to Pay services, and the first to complete live transactions.
Why choose us?
Responsive app enabler
Banks want to focus their internal digital spend towards last-mile customer interface that maximise R&D returns. But, thanks to Request to Pay, that doesn’t stop them looking toward the next big change in digital payments; adopting a platform that enhances their app investments—with the added benefits of being easily integrated, always secure, and one that empowers vulnerable bill payers.
Digital platform advantages
As a recent EY report on platform-based banking puts it—“In the digital economy, you can become a driver without owning a taxi, a hotelier without owning a hotel, or a bookseller without owning a bookstore.” Digital platforms accelerate innovation by empowering banks and other businesses to enhance their customer mobile apps with ready-to-play integrations that add instant value without placing fresh demands on in-house digital teams.
Simplified integration
Platform business success stories like Airbnb, Uber and Just Eat show just how much consumers value simplified integration, user-friendly interface and easy navigation. For app users, these factors decrease search time and improve satisfaction, fulfilling their needs faster.
When it comes to mobile payments, we’ve built an API formed around the UK standards-based messaging infrastructure, Request to Pay, to give banks and financial services a first mover advantage in secure digital payments from their apps or platforms.
Secured mobile payments
Providers of pay by link solutions—where a biller requests payment via a public URL—argue it’s a straightforward and secure way to get paid. This disregards well known Information Security industry guidance, advising consumers not to click on links, as it could lead to phishing attacks through fake landing pages. Request to Pay solutions are a secure alternative to pay by link.
Case study
An Open Banking powered payments provider wanted to increase the engagement with their customer facing app.
Struggling with a high rate of churn our client was excited by the opportunity to increase customer engagement in their app. By embedding the receipt of payment requests, their customers would have an unavoidable need to come back time and again. However building and maintaining Open Banking connectivity across Europe is complex and they did not want to distract from this core part of the service. So they chose to connect using Answer Pay’s platform.
Connecting allowed them to leverage our pre-certified platform and APIs to significantly reduce their time to market. Plus as new parties join the Request to Pay ecosystem, our platform automatically makes them available reducing ongoing maintenance costs too. The solution was fully white labelled and embedded in their existing application making it easy for customers to adopt.
They are now seeing their payments volume build and are gaining new customers.