Social impact is what communities value

Everyone inside and outside of organisations expect them to improve people's lives

There is an increasing demand for actions by companies to have a Social Impact with and for their customers, community, and the broader landscape of influence they have with the country.

These goals often align to Corporate Social Responsibility goals (CSR).

Organizations are rethinking their CSR strategies to keep up with the rapidly changing expectations of business and the community.

Customers not only expect products that meet their needs but also for companies to go above and beyond to serve society’s needs. A company's Social Impact strategy should focus on how it can create value for society.

Social Impact, and CSR, is the belief that a business has a duty to act in an ethical and moral way while also contributing to society. This has been around for years, but nowadays it is more important than ever. Consumers want companies to act responsibly, and they are demanding more out of them.

One way that corporations can do this is by investing in sustainable initiatives. For example, Coca-Cola purchases carbon credits to offset the carbon footprint of their products and Qantas is releasing a new 'green tier' to encourage their customers to take more carbon neutral initiatives in their everyday live.

Under-innovated areas are the growth areas of social impact

An under-innovated area to date, but one which is being increasingly looked at by regulators, senior management and company boards is how Corporate Social Responsibility applies and may change the approaches taken with customers when they fall behind on a bill, or many bills. Our research shows that most customers who struggle with a few bills from time to time do so due to acute or unexpected reasons. Almost all do not 'plan' to fall behind on bills and do not want to.

But the actions taken by companies when customers do fall behind on a bill, no matter how loyal they have been, are immediate and can feel unnecessarily punitive. If loyalty counts for little when it matters most to the customer, then why should customers be loyal?

Philanthropic

We enable companies to have a very customer-centric, digital approach to engaging with customers about debt and overdue bills. We know chasing and recovering debt is a pain-point in any customer-business relationship.

Until now crowd-sourcing, and all its variations, has been off-limits for companies because in existing models, crowdsourcing:

-               there is no function that gets money directly to the company

-               there is no corporate alignment with a crowdsourcing company

-               there is no incentive for companies to use crowd-sourcing currently.

By being a better corporate citizen proactively it reduces, mitigates and can entirely negate new regulation and legislation being enacted to force companies to be better corporate citizens.

Ethical

For Providers customers we reduce financial anxiety, the anxiety that comes from knowing the ‘consequences’ (calls, red coloured bills etc) from being overdue on bills.

Legal

HelpPay fits within all legal frameworks, industry regulations and obligations and other associated payments legislation.

Economic

By helping get more money into companies quicker and with less effort we reduce ‘Business As Usual’ costs (phone calls, Emails, Printed follow up letters, People headcount) by reducing their need to exist and be ‘deployed’ to chase up a ‘known’ volume of bad debt, because there is simply less bad debt to follow up.

"Improving communities is about setting them up to succeed and support each other in easy and self-sustaining ways"

Andrew Ellett, CEO, HelpPay

The mental health impact of falling behind on bills

People who fall behind on bills and owe debts to companies experience significant financial anxiety. Research has shown this results in significant mental and physical health impacts for the individual that owes money and those around them, including increases to physical harm and domestic violence, increases in substance abuse, withdrawing from community and society events, and increases in break-ups of households.

Annually over 700 million bills are sent by Australian companies. Under 49’s only pay on time 61% of the time, with main reasons being lack of funds and acute hardship.

When a business has a customer that falls behind on a bill, to the company they have one problem to solve with that customer. Follow-up processes are triggered immediately. The tolerance for being a few days late is extremely low.

But customers might find themselves behind on several bills, so, very quickly, some customers have several companies sending reminder letters, reminder texts to call the company, and their mobile phone starts ringing with consultants asking why they haven't paid. It can quickly add up and become too much to handle. Letter go un-opened, calls go unanswered, compounding the problem.

Most people want to help, this is what stops them

Asking for money from family and friends is common, but it’s emotional and difficult. Our research found 70% agree it is part of our culture to help in a crisis and that when people help often, they help the same person more than once.

Calling a company to pay someone’s bill is impossible, sharing whole bills is clunky and ends up oversharing. Often the barrier to helping was simply the effort and time it takes both parties to help and the transparency of closing the loop that the money given ended up where it should. Both parties want to feel happy, reassured, and relieved that they just know that the problem is solved. 

Australia told us helping should be easier

It all just feels too hard, doesn't it? It should be easier to ask for help, it should be easier to give help, and knowing that money given towards a bill actually went to the bill should be immediate. And now it is. 

Throughout 2020 and 2021 HelpPay surveyed over 700 people in Australia and spoken to more than 200 senior business leaders, charity owners, community groups. The feedback from everyone has been consistently positive with the most common question 'why hasn't someone thought of this before, it's great!'

HelpPay is making helping easier with a patent pending app and platform. Our approach turns every bill into its own socially sharable link and payment page, allows multiple payments, prevents overpayments, and creates digital trust by guaranteeing money paid only goes where it should.