Untangling payments: tracking incoming payments to the right customer account

Sounds difficult for any finance department, right? This payment reconciliation challenge isn’t just unique to universities, however. Whether you're managing student fees, travel bookings, marketplace transactions, or subscription renewals, the challenge remains the same: how do you efficiently match incoming payments to the right customer accounts?

UAX Group’s experience mirrors what countless organisations face daily. The Group processes 20,000 tuition payment transactions annually, often receiving payments "without enough information to match them to the right student," as Diego Santacreu, CFO & COO, explains. "Sometimes [we] even [had] duplicated payments. Managing this manually required considerable effort."

The pain points extend beyond education. Travel agencies often struggle to link international customer payments to specific booking references, while subscription services must match recurring payments to customer accounts across different billing cycles. Regardless of the sector, a common thread emerges: manual reconciliation creates operational bottlenecks, increases error rates, and consumes valuable staff time that could be better spent on strategic initiatives.

Getnet Platforms’s Digital Payins solution transforms this challenge into a streamlined process through intelligent payment links and automated reconciliation. The system works by allowing businesses to send branded payment links through customers’ preferred communication channels, such as email, WhatsApp, or social media. No coding is required, effectively turning any communication channel into a checkout.

What sets the solution apart is its automatic reconciliation abilities. Each payment is automatically linked to the specific customer or transaction ID, eliminating the guesswork that often troubles manual processes. In the case of UAX Group, the finance department now receives complete payment data, including date, amount, reference, and student ID, all ready to upload into their systems in just a few clicks. This real-time visibility means transaction details are captured instantly, providing immediate clarity on payment status.

Through API integration, the system generates automated files that ensure smooth assimilation with existing platforms, be it a university's student management system, a travel agency's booking platform, or a marketplace's order management tool. This universal approach means the same core technology that solves UAX Group's student payment challenges can address similar reconciliation issues across entirely different industries.

What makes Digital Payins particularly powerful is the flexibility and simplicity of payment links. Often, beauty lies in simplicity. From the customer’s perspective, the ease is almost unrivalled. Customers simply pay through their preferred method and maintain a seamless experience, while businesses preserve their brand consistency throughout the payment journey.

This creates a win-win scenario where operational efficiency improves without compromising customer experience, as evidenced by UAX Group. Since implementation, it has achieved a 20% reduction in manual reconciliation time and a 30% improvement in enrollment processing speed, along with near-perfect accuracy in transaction matching and unified payment management across all five institutions. "Today, we can dedicate more time to strategic tasks while offering a faster, clearer payment process to our students," notes Susana Yuste, Director of Billing & Collections at UAX Group.

Digital Payins offer much more than improved payment processing. Through transforming operational capabilities, organisations across every sector can focus on growth, customer experience, and strategic initiatives rather than administrative tasks. In doing so, high-volume payment operations shift from an operational overhead to a true competitive advantage.

Ready to turn payment complexity into simplicity?

Partner with Getnet Platforms — a paytech part of the Santander Group specialising in account-to-account (A2A) solutions for Financial Institutions, NBFIs, and Corporates.