In the light of the welfare reforms, Family Mosaic has reported how it has been using Allpay’s swipe cards and payments services to minimise arrears during its participation in one of the government’s direct payment demonstration projects. The contract value was reported to be in the region of £160,000.
Family Mosaic has been using Allpay’s payment services since 2003 and uses a range of methods including payment cards, which allow tenants to pay their rent locally at PayPoints and post offices, as well as web, apps and texts. It also uses Allpay’s direct debit service, which gives tenants the flexibility to have payments collected on any day of the month and at a range of frequencies.
Viv Davies, head of collections and credit control, Family Mosaic, said, “With Allpay, I think we offer every variety of payment method. None of our tenants has said ‘you don’t have enough payments options. We have around 400 tenants on the direct payment project; 40 per cent are paying through direct debits, another 40 per cent using Allpay payment cards, and the rest via phone, online and standing orders.
“We realised a long time ago, not just ahead of universal credit, that people have different payment habits so we wanted to open direct debits to every day of the month. We’ve now created that habit with our tenants so when universal credit comes along, the flexibility is already there and our tenants are used to it.”
