Helen is Finland’s second largest energy company, with about 450,000 customers throughout the country. Each year, Helen sends about 3,500,000 invoices to its customers. From the beginning of 2019 Helen will be the first company in Finland to offer its customers the possibility to pay invoices via the MobilePay service.
The challenge
Today, the majority of Helen’s customers use e-invoicing. To make it even easier for its customers, the company wanted to offer more options for electronic invoicing. The Head of the Invoicing and Analytics Unit at Helen, Kirsi Kuusisto, has already considered mobile payments a strong option for years, but until now the time hasn’t been ripe for it, and the technology also needed further development.
“Mobile payment will gain a foothold in the future,” says Kuusisto. It is both simpler for the customers and it ensures faster payments for us. We discovered that in Denmark, where MobilePay is used widely, customers often pay as soon as they get notification of an invoice on their phone.”
The solution
Eventually, everything fell into place. In just a couple of years, MobilePay has become the leading mobile payment platform in the Nordic area, with nearly a million users in Finland already. In addition, MobilePay’s partner PostNord Strålfors has developed a solid mobile payment solution that enables the transmission of invoices into the service on a large scale.
“I am very pleased with the way the PostNord Strålfors team has approached us with new solutions. They are real experts and deal with everything swiftly,” says Kuusisto.
Helen has co-operated with PostNord Strålfors and Intrum Justitia regarding payments since 2017. PostNord Strålfors handles the transmission of invoices and Intrum Justitia takes care of the accounts ledger, payment reminders, and debt collection.
For Helen’s customers, the new co-operation with MobilePay means that they no longer need to log in to their online bank to pay their invoices. Instead, all you need is a couple of clicks or swipes on your mobile phone.
The new payment solution will not increase workloads at Helen, either. When new customers sign a contract with Helen, they can choose the payment method. Helen sends this information to PostNord Strålfors where the invoices are created and sent to the customer using the selected method.
The result
The solution will be launched in early 2019 so it is too early to estimate its future impact. According to Kuusisto, the pilot phase was a promising experience.
“We got a lot of positive feedback. Many customers had hoped that more companies would offer the opportunity to pay all of their invoices by mobile device. Also many companies contacted both me and PostNord Strålfors and MobilePay. Many of them are interested in seeing how the system works in practice.”
The future
“Consumers want to use their mobile devices for everything,” says Kuusisto. There will certainly be more payment solutions in the future, as mobile payment is increasing rapidly.
For the moment, Helen is extremely satisfied with its co-operation with MobilePay. And after all, it is a pioneer in mobile payments in Finland. Helen intends to follow digital development and customer expectations closely, and relies on PostNord Strålfors’ support in these matters.
The role of PostNord Strålfors
“PostNord Strålfors has been involved in the entire process, from the development to the implementation of the service. They are real experts,” summarizes Kuusisto.
