Simplify wedding payments (and everthing else) with Open Banking 

For wedding planners, juggling deposits, final payments, and ensuring smooth transactions amid the flurry of coordinating with multiple vendors is like walking a tightrope. Vendors, too,  often face delays or uncertainties in payment, affecting their cash flow and service delivery. Venues must navigate booking fees, milestone payments, and refunds, with some still using spreadsheets to manage the process. And looming over it all are risks like fraud, chargebacks, data breaches, and human errors, that can inflate costs and complicate payments administration. Meanwhile, the happy couple must budget meticulously, track expenses, and ensure payments stay on schedule, all without dampening their excitement for the big day. 

This is where open banking comes in.

Open banking is a transformative solution for high-value transactions such as wedding payments within the hospitality sector. It eliminates the constraints of card limits and costly processing fees and offers a safer, quicker, and more efficient alternative to traditional bank transfers, drafts, or cheques.

Simplify Payment Collection, Accelerate Payments, and Increase Cost-Savings

Traditional payment methods like manual bank transfers are slow and expensive. Vendors typically share their bank details in PDF format, requiring clients to manually set them up as payees. This process involves multiple authentication steps, as well as the hassle of entering and verifying long account numbers. With substantial sums of money involved, transaction typos can be absolutely terrifying. Plus, the business must confirm receipt of payment before starting wedding preparations and services, adding to operational costs and friction.

With open banking payments, clients can say goodbye to the stress of potentially mistyping lengthy account details and losing a lot of money. Instead, they enjoy a quick, secure, and frictionless payment process directly from their bank accounts. Authentication is completed through the familiar environment of their banking app, with personal data encrypted and protected by industry-standard security measures. This keeps sensitive payment information 'invisible' to fraudsters, enhancing security. Unlike direct debits, where payments are pulled by the merchant, open banking empowers clients to initiate payments themselves, giving them greater control.

Advanced pay-by-link solutions streamline invoicing by allowing wedding planners and vendors to send branded payment requests directly to clients, simplifying bill settlements. With preset payee information, payments can be authenticated securely in a few simple taps. This demonstrates the significant improvement that open banking can bring to businesses' accounts receivable processes. Moreover, with SEPA Instant and Faster Payments, open banking enables immediate transfers and real-time notifications, accelerating service delivery. 

Reduce Fraud and Ensure Data Compliance

Providers of open banking solutions are mandated to uphold rigorous security standards to protect customer data. This technology ensures safety by utilising API endpoints developed and managed by banks, which play a critical role in verifying account information and facilitating transactions between accounts. Recent studies estimate a 61 percent reduction in fraud this year, attributed to advanced encryption and real-time authentication provided by open banking APIs. Initially developed for online banking, open banking has evolved with substantial investments in improving its security protocols. The insights gained from these investments underpin the foundation of contemporary open banking technology.

Streamline Operations with Automation and Payments Orchestration 

Smart payment solutions empower wedding planners and vendors to create personalised payment plans and automate scheduled payments. This saves time, reduces administrative costs, and enables them to focus on delivering an unforgettable experience for the couple.

With smart payment orchestration controls, businesses can automate payment methods based on various criteria such as transaction value, location, product type, or specific transaction details. For instance, they might choose to accept card payments for initial venue deposits and use open banking for final balances. This approach ensures clients benefit from credit card protections, and helps businesses minimise card fees on larger transactions. Additionally, wedding planners can easily set automated workflows to chase failed payments and present an alternative method to complete the transaction – via bank or card.

To sum up, open banking offers the opportunity to simplify the payment process for weddings, bolsters security, and ensures immediate payment settlement. This innovation not only saves time, transaction fees, and operational costs, but also ensures a smooth experience for planners, vendors, and couples alike, freeing them to focus on what truly matters - creating cherished memories. 

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About Prommt 

Founded in 2017, Prommt is a payments platform that is revolutionising payments for enterprises and their clients. Its innovative solutions enable fast, frictionless card and open banking payments anytime, anywhere. Prommt is an enterprise-grade solution that is built for teams, supporting multiple locations, and provides powerful reporting and alerting capabilities. It is trusted by industry leaders across the automotive, luxury retail, hospitality, builders merchants, and insurance sectors. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Prommt is used by businesses today across Europe and North America, and is the winner of the Best Open Banking Service Initiative awarded by Global Payments Innovation Awards 2023 as well as a finalist for the Best Open Banking Payments Project within the Open Banking Expo Awards 2023. 

Curious to learn more about how Prommt can help you? Get in touch - www.prommt.com 

About the Author 

Serial paytech entrepreneur Donal McGuinness is CEO of Prommt. He studied Information Technology at DCU and Telecommunications Engineering at TU Dublin and spent the early years of his career in the telecommunications industry. His experience in mobile payments dates to 1999 when he founded his first mobile payments company, ItsMobile and since then has been working areas covering payments, money remittances and digital identity.