Streamlined payment security for a high-volume recruitment firm: from hours of in-person processing to minutes of remote work

When you’re responsible for paying nearly a thousand temporary workers every week, you need your payment processes to be bulletproof. Speed and security are top of the list, but legacy banking systems aren’t always up to scratch.

Legacy systems by nature lack bank integration, they lack advanced fraud and error capabilities, and they are rarely intuitive enough to give you the flexibility a busy business demands…

The Company

Established in 1988, Thorn Baker supports clients in the construction, facilities management, and industrial sectors – with specialised recruitment services. With 90 of its own staff, and responsible for paying up to 1500 temporary workers each week on behalf of its customers, the firm’s finance department needs to be efficient and accurate, 24/7.

The Challenge

Cumbersome smart-cards, and no way to safely check they’re paying the right people.

“The payment system we used relied on a physical card reader, which meant we needed to taxi it around the business for people to make payments.

And it was connected to a terrible old-fashioned interface. Setting up new users took so long that we just wouldn’t do it, we’d recycle the username and passwords of people who’d left.”

And even with its workarounds to make the unsuitable system work, the employer still found itself at risk.

Its nature in recruitment meant it needed robust protection from modern slavery practices, misdirected payments, and potential fraud:

Our weekly BACS run is around 1500 people, mostly workers in construction and industrial roles. We knew we had to be careful with modern slavery, with paying multiple people’s wages into one bank account, and with misdirected payments – these things were very difficult to police for us.

Looking for a way to streamline, automate, and safeguard their payments process, Thorn Baker turned to AccessPay.

The Solution

Automated payments with no reliance on card readers, with integrated Account Name Verification (ANV) checks.

With AccessPay, Thorn Baker were able to address two challenges together:

“We thought, there must be an online portal that can sort all of this out at once.

That was when AccessPay got in touch with us, the timing was excellent. Now we use the system to automate our monthly payroll (90+ staff) as well as our weekly BACS run and not a card reader in sight!”

The AccessPay system also comes with Account Name Verification (ANV) built-in, which means more protection for the business and more screening of payees – without needing to log into another system.

We can check account names and details when they register, rather than when they’ve been working with us for weeks. It works so well that we’ve changed our whole payment policy to channel everything through ANV, which safeguards us against modern slavery and misdirected payments. Even if we make a payment outside of AccessPay, we screen all new vendors through the system’s ANV.

The Results

Quicker, flexible and safer payment processes.

On the surface, financial tasks are easier, quicker, and more convenient.

Below the surface, this ease translates to higher efficiency, time released to focus on other tasks, and a more robust payments process overall:

AccessPay is simple to navigate – I can see a BACS file easily, without the drama of having to log into BACS itself. If I need a new user, I can do that in minutes. It’s revolutionised our working life at a critical time in the week, taking the pressure off us.

If we’re working late, we can upload the BACS payment easily. If someone’s on the road, they can log on via their mobile and approve it. That is a world away from what we’ve had previously, it’s allowed us to be much more flexible with our deadlines.

And whilst switching financial systems can be an intimidating task for some organisations, Thorn Baker found AccessPay a smooth transition:

Onboarding was fast and straightforward. When we’ve called customer service for issues, they’ve been spot on in understanding it, fixing it, and walking us through anything we weren’t quite grasping. They’ve always been top tier.

We work faster, our processes are better, and our payments are much, much safer.