Coastline Housing has consolidated and streamlined its payment services after signing a three-year contract with payment collection specialist allpay. The housing provider was looking for a single agreement to cover its payment acceptance channels. Previously, it had two separate contracts in place for bill payments, including an agreement with Santander and the Co-operative Bank, the latter having recently withdrawn banking services to local authorities.

The contract with allpay, which went live in September, enables Coastline to continue to offer residents’ access to both PayPoint and the Post Office for the payment of housing and garage rents and sundry debts, and to expand the flexibility of its Direct Debits. To avoid disruption, allpay worked with Coastline to re-route payments via its existing Issuer Identification Numbers (IIN), and reissue cards that were linked to an IIN supplied by its previous provider.

Using allpay’s fully managed Direct Debit service, Coastline will also be able to offer its tenants full flexibility on payment collection dates and frequencies, giving tenants the option to choose a date and frequency suitable for them.

Previously, Coastline could only offer a weekly cycle or two monthly collection dates, and has relied on tenants completing paper mandates. With allpay, they will have the added benefit of being able to set up and amend Direct Debits online, via allpay’s cloud-based portal.

Richard Bettison, Head of Financial Reporting and Control at Coastline Housing, said: “allpay allowed us to achieve the dual objective of expanding the range of payment options we provide our residents and uniting the services under a single contract. Particularly through Universal Credit, the added flexibility on Direct Debits will help us to increase take-up as the proposition will be more attractive to residents.”