In the utilities industry, customer experience is everything, though it can be easy to take for granted that bill payers will continue to pay their providers consistently and on time to ensure continued access to services. When it comes to the reality of these relationships, however, Nicole Haskins, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Paymentus, says, “It truly is a marriage.”
The analogy works on several levels. Haskins, like many utility customers, has remained with her providers for over two decades, relying on them for vital resources including electricity, water, and gas. Like in any other successful long-term relationship, her expectations must be consistently met, as compromising that confidence can have lasting consequences.
“Once you break that trust, or you offer something that doesn’t work well for your customers, or you don’t offer something they need, they remember,” Haskins explains. “What we do is not a commodity. It truly is a service, and it’s a service that you want to stay ingrained with all the way through to keep the relationship going.”
Today, utilities must balance providing sustained delivery of services with pressure to move forward complex digital transformation initiatives. Working to strengthen and maintain access to AI, cloud ERP, and data-driven insights can be a costly process. Simultaneously, providers must serve all customers, including the many Americans who remain underbanked and may not as readily engage with digital services that could standardize and simplify their payment methods. Such competing demands can create a tension between technological advancement and services that are efficient for all customers you serve.
The solution, according to Haskins, is for SAP customers to expect more from their payment vendors. After all, billing and payment processing represents the most frequent touchpoint utilities have with their customers and therefore signifies a major area where relationship-building between providers and consumers can thrive.
In conversation with ASUG, Haskins discusses how Paymentus is helping utilities maintain valuable, long-term relationships with their customers. By simplifying the breadth and complexity of vendors utilities work with to provide options to their customers, Paymentus is able to streamline and create a “layer cake” of vendors. This consolidation eliminates the complexity of orchestrating multiple vendors, creating frictionless payment experiences that require minimal effort and achieve maximum payment adoption for all customers—all while helping utilities to reduce their costs to serve and become more agile, modern, and relevant.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What trends are particularly at the top of your mind for you and your work?
There are two. The first relates to AI. Although it’s not a trend—it’s here to stay. If you’re not utilizing AI in your solutions and platforms, you’re already behind, and AI is only going to get better and offer more value.
However, this trend has created a chasm in many areas that SAP serves, particularly in government and utilities. With AI, everyone’s highly focused on innovative high-tech automation, from customer service to payments to user experiences. But a large segment of the population in the United States doesn’t take advantage of any technology.
At Paymentus, it’s part of our mantra to make sure we don’t leave any client or customer behind. Most people don’t realize that 24% of the United States is still underbanked. That means they have no credit cards and no checking or savings accounts.
24% to a utility, city, or county is a huge amount—a quarter of their population can’t use what they’re investing in. They can’t pay through the web. They won’t use the UIs. The AI that might be coming out has nothing to do with them because they weren’t even involved in interactions with that agency.
We needed to fill that chasm for both our clients and their customers to fulfill our policy of leaving no customer behind. In addition to the innovative digital options we offer, we’re still focused on serving walk-in traffic, cash traffic, and the underbanked at retail locations. And we’ve found ways to digitize and automate those more traditional payment options so utility providers aren’t dealing with manual reporting, delays in payment posting, or PCI-risks. This way, as a biller with SAP or any CIS, you can honestly say, ‘I serve all, and I serve all in a holistic solution.’
The second trend we’re focused on is reducing the cost of serve. Everyone has said for years, ‘I need to do more with less.’ But we’re in a time when you need to do more with more, and that isn’t working. Our clients are trying to figure out how to reduce their costs to serve without reducing innovation or technological advancements.
We’ve seen a trend toward reducing the cost to serve by offsetting costs with user fees. If you were to ask yourself, ‘Would I pay my utility bill with a user fee?’ it’s like that you’d initially say no. The reality is, we’re paying user fees all the time—airline tickets, movie tickets, Taylor Swift tickets, tax bills—all have user fees.
Consumers have adopted this fee model across all areas of their lives, and now utilities are saying, ‘If this is widely acceptable to consumers and it’s legal, I can adopt fees as a way to offset my costs so I can free up dollars for more innovative technology.’
Q: Do you see the absorbed fee and user fee models as linked to how the pendulum is swinging and utilities are trying to find ways to change that model?
Yes, and utilities should feel comfort in the fact that credit card usage is up 38% since 2023. Consumers are adopting credit card usage more widely—those who can use it, remembering there’s still that 24% demographic without access.
Considering that more people are charging credit and accepting user fees, utilities are asking themselves, ‘Do I need to keep absorbing these costs?’
Adding to the cost situation is that it’s not uncommon for us to work with utilities and discover they’re sometimes paying up to five different vendors in order to offer a range of necessary billing and payment options. I call this the “layer cake.”
When they tell us, ‘It’s just so expensive,’ we respond, ‘What if we took this five-layer cake and made it one layer with one vendor while keeping SAP?’ We remove all those hands in the cookie jar and slim down your technology stack so you can be more agile and better serve your market.
This approach can reduce your service costs while you still absorb fees. Or, we can take that whole amount you were paying to five vendors, give you a big zero as your cost, and defer it to end users, which recent data shows that 85% of consumers are willingly paying user fees. For us, it’s a win-win—we just want to provide better technology with options and the ability to save.
Q: When I’m talking about trust, both in simplicity and the lack of potential for things to go wrong between those different steps in the process, do you see that as another benefit of moving to this model?
Layers are only good in cake, lasagna, and maybe a nice haircut. Otherwise, layers are bad because there’s a propensity for problems between the layers.
We’ve all experienced what I call “the spinning wheel of death.” You submit your payment, but something doesn’t feel right; it’s taking too long. So, you click it again, and now you don’t know if you submitted one or two payments. If there’s a hiccup between these layers, you, as the consumer, are the only one who witnessed it.
What you’ve done with all these stacks and components is create issues and mistrust with the end user. The first thing they’ll do is call and ask if you received their payment, creating a manual interaction when it was supposed to be automated.
Minimizing steps creates what the market calls a frictionless experience. I prefer to think of it as thoughtless. You should be able to click ‘Pay’ and it’s done without a second thought.
Nobody walks into a grocery store thinking, ‘I need to get a cart, get the list, get in line, and then pay.’ We just walk in, get a cart, and get our items. You don’t think about payment until you’re in the checkout, and you want to complete it and leave.
That’s how it should be with technology. You’re thinking about a service—utility services or financial services. But you don’t want to think about the payment experience itself.
Q: Would you associate what you’re describing with the idea of an instant payment network?
Our platform itself utilizes what we call the Instant Payment Network®, which is designed to reduce the lag of what were previously siloed payment methods.
For example, the bulk of our payment platform has handled ACH and credit cards for over 40 years. We’re only 21 years old, but we built our core platform on these established methods. About six years ago, we recognized we needed more advanced payment methods to keep up with the digital world, so we added Venmo, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
We also saw we needed to serve the underbanked, so we added retail payments—cash payments at Walmart and other retailers. We added support for crypto through PayPal and enabled the PayPal app itself to take payments for billers.
We asked ourselves: Could anyone build this so that the data is instantaneously in SAP and the funds are immediately starting money movement, meaning the money is getting ready to be deposited the next day? And the answer was no.
So, we built our Instant Payment Network to take all these different payment methods from various sources and funnel them through a single source. Apple doesn’t play nice with PayPal; American Express certainly doesn’t work seamlessly with Visa. They all have different tools and processes that eventually return money and data to the utility.
Our network ensures the agency has one reconciliation, one integration, one system to manage, but with the entire spectrum of options available to serve 100% of their demographic.
The word ‘instant’ there that you picked up on is critical. It means that you immediately know that a customer went to Walmart and made a payment. You don’t have to wait five days to hear when Walmart finally tells you the payment was made or legacy systems finally get it to you, so you can move on and conduct your business.
Connect with Nicole Haskins on LinkedIn.
Q: You need to address different types of consumers who expect various kinds of experiences. Can you talk about that?
I was born in 1977 and grew up with credit cards. I have an Android phone, which already limits what I can access. I can’t use Apple Pay. I’m unlikely to use Discover; my generation didn’t even know what Discover was for a long time.
I have this predetermined story in my head as a 48-year-old consumer about what payment methods I can use. But I also have expectations as a human in 2025. I want things immediately. I want instant gratification and results.
Younger generations grew up with PayPal and Venmo, understanding these instruments differently. Everyone has their personal preferences and payment instruments.
What unites us is that we all want instant gratification. And nobody messes with your money—when you do, it’s a big deal.
Across the entire consumer base, the common factor is trust in the system we’re using. That system must build trust through optionality, security, and comfort in the channels that end users prefer.
Getting that all in one system is very difficult, so it’s something we’re very proud of. I can say to a utility, consumer company, or whoever SAP or anyone else might serve that I have the trust, the security, the comfort, and the spectrum of options so that we can meet all of your constituent’s needs.
Q: I’d love to hear more about your bottom-line support framework. What have you seen in terms of how utility customers can transform their views of billing and payment processes?
Many think the job stops once the system is live with a new provider—contract signed, system implemented, it’s over. The reality is that’s just the beginning. What you’ve done is established a ceiling of adoption.
Let’s say a biller starts with us at 50% digital payment adoption rate. As a responsible firm looking out for the customer journey and the billers themselves, we’re trying to raise the bar to 65%, 75% adoption. Nobody can get to 100% because there are always customers who can’t use digital methods.
We quickly ask, ‘How can I best serve each end customer and biller to make them aware of their options?’ With change management programs, you get to the ceiling. Then, you address the underbanked population, pushing to the next ceiling. You market to them about user fees, and the ceiling rises again.
It’s a constant journey. It’s why most vendors have multi-year contracts, not because they want that, but because you need to be invested in that biller and their customer base to help them achieve their goals at the lowest cost. That means knowing your biller, knowing their consumers, and having support systems from account management to complimentary marketing services.
For us, working with clients means doing transformative business beyond just collection, incorporating communication tools, adoption tools, technology tools, and cost reduction tools.
Q: What is your main objective in sharing this message with the SAP community?
My main objective is to get the SAP customer base to understand that they need to expect more from their vendors, especially their billing and payment vendors. They need to expect more from their payment processor because that processor is interacting with their customers more than anyone else outside their CIS.
If you rank the most customer-facing functions, it’s generally who handles billing and who handles payments. With a utility customer, Paymentus interacts with them 12 times a year through notifications, reminders, physical bills, and eBill delivery. But they’re also communicating with us as they make those payments.
You shouldn’t settle for layers of legacy vendors. You need someone who has thoughtfully considered the customer journey from cash to card, from print to payment and determined how to achieve maximum adoption at the lowest cost without sacrificing technology or experience.
You need it for adoption, and your finance team is looking for it. What we do isn’t a commodity; it’s a service and a partnership. Expect more because your organization and your customers deserve it.
Visit the Paymentus website.
About Paymentus
Paymentus (NYSE: PAY) is a leading provider of cloud-based bill payment technology and solutions headquartered at 11605 North Community House Road, Suite 300, Charlotte, NC 28277. We deliver our next-generation product suite through a modern technology stack to more than 2,500 billers across North America. Our omni-channel platform provides consumers with easy-to-use, flexible and secure electronic bill payment experiences through their preferred payment channel and type. Paymentus’ proprietary Instant Payment Network®, or IPN, extends our reach by connecting our IPN partners’ platforms and tens of thousands of billers to our integrated billing, payment, and reconciliation capabilities. Paymentus serves billers of all sizes across a variety of industry verticals, including utilities, financial services, insurance, government, telecommunications and healthcare. For more information, please visit www.paymentus.com.
About ASUG
ASUG is the world’s largest SAP user group. Originally founded by a group of visionary SAP customers in 1991, its mission is to help people and organizations get the most value from their investment in SAP technology. ASUG currently serves thousands of businesses via companywide memberships, connecting more than 130,000 professionals with networking and educational resources to help them master new challenges. Through in-person and virtual events, on-demand digital resources, and ongoing advocacy for its membership, ASUG helps SAP customers make more possible.