Eighth UK Water Company to sign up for Eckoh’s payment services

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the UKÂ’s leading provider of speech recognition and associated payment solutions, today announced that it has won new three year contracts to provide the EckohPAY secure payment solution with a further two water utility companies.

When these two new services commence later in the year Eckoh will provide payment solutions to eight water companies in the UK, representing over 50% of the market and with a combined total of over 20 million customers.

EckohPAY is a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (“PCI DSS”) compliant service that enables customers to make secure card payments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over the phone, web and mobile. When a customer wishes to pay their water and sewerage charges, it will validate them against their customer reference number, capture card details and handle card authorisation and settlement in real time. The EckohPAY service is a proven method to reduce the volume of repetitive calls to contact centre advisors while decreasing operational costs by up to 90%. In the last year Eckoh has processed over £117 million in payment transactions for our utility clients.

Water companies face a number of challenges including increased costs and prices, technology changes and emerging environmental and regulatory pressures. Eckoh delivers a user experience that exceeds expectations and helps to address OfwatÂ’s DG9 customer satisfaction measures and dealing with incoming telephone traffic.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented: “Our water utility clients have benefited greatly from the adoption of EckohPAY. Our secure, automated, self-service solution means customers do not have to give their card details to contact centre agents, which provides them with reassurance and security. It also allows them to pay their bill at any time, even if the contact centre is closed. Our solutions continue to generate significant new business interest from other utility providers and we remain optimistic about further increasing our market share.”