Pinnacle Group takes service-charge payments over the phone with Paytia on its existing RingCentral telephony. Housing case study: agents never see card data.
“I wanted something that was as simple to set up and use as a virtual terminal or a point-of-sale card reader - but also had the flexibility to adapt as our usage and functional needs grow. I'm delighted to say that Paytia has achieved precisely that.”
Collecting service charges from tenants and apartment owners is rarely simple. To make it easier, Pinnacle — one of the UK's leading housing management companies — set up a phone-support line so customers could ask about their charges and pay on the same call. Pinnacle manages tens of thousands of affordable and market homes from over 100 locations across the country, with a workforce in the thousands. One job that falls to the team is collecting building maintenance, or "service", charges from apartment owners. Alison Wade, Pinnacle's Head of Income and Performance, wanted to make those payments easier to take. Plenty of owners were encouraged to pay by bank transfer, but many still preferred to call — often just to clarify a charge — and letting them pay during that same call was good for everyone. Alison had run collection operations before, so she knew PCI DSS compliance wasn't optional. Without it, the business risked fines, transaction penalties and damage to its reputation with tenants and owners. With most of her team working from home, she also needed an alternative to the old way of protecting card details — putting payment takers in a monitored room where they couldn't record card numbers. And whatever she chose had to start small and grow with the business.
Most options that let agents take payments without seeing card details came with complex, costly, time-consuming integration. Having not found anything that fit, Alison asked Pinnacle's payment provider, Opayo, who suggested Paytia's Secure Virtual Terminal. It turned out to be exactly what she was after. Customers no longer had to read out their card details — they key them on their own phone keypad, so the agent never sees or hears the number. It was easy for customers and agents alike, and setup was straightforward: no complex integration, and it worked with Pinnacle's existing RingCentral telephony. Pinnacle could start with a single agent licence and add more as demand grew. And because card data never enters Pinnacle's environment, the service takes a big chunk of the PCI DSS burden off the business.
By every measure that matters to Pinnacle, the payments line has worked. Apartment owners have more choice in how they pay, collection runs more smoothly, and both customer security and the Pinnacle brand are protected. Agents never handle a card number, and it all sits on the telephony Pinnacle already had.
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