Paymaster
On-the-Job Training Program

Pay it Forward
Paymaster USA Inc., one-stop bill payment centers, and the Transact 5.0 Accounts Receivable Software, is the brainchild of Beverly Cooper, a former benefit design and development consultant for Blue Cross and Blue Shield, who developed the business model.

Paymaster USA Inc. has been in business since 2000 and was created to offer a service to customers who could utilize the company’s software to pay their bills in cash and in one location instead of standing in line at several locations. The typical customer was someone who paid in cash, who didn’t believe in checks and the mail system, who wanted a receipt and who typically didn’t have a lot of money to spare. Cooper wanted to help these customers and believed she could do it and at the same time provide a true service to businesses such as utility companies. Cooper quickly found several companies that liked her bill-paying software and the rest is history.

Paymaster offers its retail customers a bill paying service with many benefits including one-stop bill paying for over 70 companies, fast, friendly service, immediate payment posting, no-hassle convenience, and several convenient locations with no long lines to wait in. In return, businesses are offered reduced overhead, immediate postings, detailed audit trails, digital stored records, 24-7 online account inquiries and unlimited accounts management. Paymaster’s records are automated and Cooper’s server is located in Philadelphia, so local emergencies like Hurricane Katrina left her business records unscathed. Payments can be made at local Paymaster locations or at several local convenience, grocery and pharmacy stores, which have agreed to take the payments for their customers as a way to increase their own store traffic.

A typical transaction records the date, time, the number of the clerk who performed the transaction, the computer location, with safeguards such as the unique billing code for each company Paymaster transacts payments for and the unique tracking number that is unique to every transaction that makes every transaction anonymous. These features make Paymaster’s services perfect for accounts receivable and any type of small payments such as parking tickets for municipalities. For example, Paymaster and Cooper recently helped the City of Seattle with a parking ticket rally, where people were allowed to waive penalty fees and interest if they paid their parking tickets and she says her software performed really well. She’s looking to repeat that success.

Cooper’s advice to other business people is to “Measure twice and cut once—plan and take the time to think through how you want your business to be received, particularly when you open and when you expand. I think sometimes for businesses, particularly small businesses that can be hard—that they fall for the fluff—the fluff that can get in the way of the stuff you should have seen and taken care of but didn’t.”

Paymaster has branched out and is now offering a lock box management service, Western Union and UPS services as well and expects continued success with those moves. But Cooper says that one of the biggest compliments she has received and one that is repeated over and over is that her retail customers say that even though they are paying a bill, they always say they have a happy and pleasant experience and get great customer service through Paymaster.” As Cooper says, “When serving the public, we should never look like we sucked on a lemon.”

Cooper believes a huge part of that customer experience comes from hiring and training the right people. She credits Mobile Works with helping her do just that when she used its On-the-Job Training program. Cooper says, “When you hire people you don’t expect to not make a good decision—you expect you will make the right one. Mobile Works makes it easier though. They weeded out the stereotypes. They didn’t want to send those people to me. What would have been the point of that? They wanted to send me people who wanted to succeed. For that I am grateful. But I never expected less.”

Says Cooper, “My job developer Joyce Browning worked as my partner. She sat down with me to develop the job description for the job I wanted to fill. A real position. She brainstormed with me and really got my feedback. Then we spent time together identifying good people and helping to create a real personality match with me. That was so very important to me. I really liked that. I ended up hiring people I could really work with. As a small business owner, you can be so isolated sometimes but my job developer at Mobile Works helped me through the process of sourcing, interviewing and hiring, every step of the way. While I thought help with the cost of hiring and training personnel was the most important part of working with Mobile Works, the support and assistance was more important.  In the end the salary reimbursement was the least important thing in the end—just a nice little safety net.”

Cooper says, “I recommend Mobile Works to other business owners I come in contact with and I also tell people I know looking for jobs all about Mobile Works. I can’t say enough about their programs. As a business owner, you owe it to yourself to check Mobile Works out.”

Paymaster is helping its retail customers pay their bills securely by helping its business customers reduce overhead and paper while keeping an audit trail and giving 24-7 access to payment information. Mobile Works understands the value of that and the value of helping small businesses like Paymaster grow.