Unlocking payment flexibility with intelligent 
payment routing
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide show. Text, US Bank, Unlocking payment flexibility with intelligent payment routing. August 11, 
2022.

(SPEECH)
SPEAKER: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar on unlocking payment flexibility with 
intelligent payment routing. Please note that this event is being recorded. If you object to this recording, 
you must disconnect from the conference line. To ask questions during the webinar, submit them using-- 
box on the right side of the screen. I will now pass it over to Joe Flaherty from Bank to start us off. Joe?

(DESCRIPTION)
Joe's video feed is on the side of the slides.

(SPEECH)
JOE FLAHERTY: Awesome. And thanks, Lauren, so much for the introduction, and thank all of you for 
joining. So my name is Joe Flaherty, I'm a working capital consultant here at the bank, and I'm here today 
doing, frankly, one of my favorite things, which is just talking to a couple of clients about some of the 
solutions that we've got so many resources working hard on behind the scenes, and to hear the success 
stories that Dan and Conor are going to share today really make it worthwhile for me as kind of a 
payments nerd.

(DESCRIPTION)
Text, From then...

(SPEECH)
So I guess to kick us off here, I want to tell a little story. So long before I turned into the payments guy 
that I am, and probably around the same time actually that I still thought I was going to be a firefighter or 
police officer or professional skier or something like that, every year on my birthday from my grandparents 
I would get a check. And I would take such pride in bringing that check into the bank and to depositing it, 
and frankly, probably my most exciting part was getting the lollipop, the red lollipop that I'd always get.

So fast forward a couple of years. And now when I get a check in the mail, it's almost as if it's an 
inconvenience for me, as if that step of bringing it into the bank or even using the mobile deposit feature 
is just such an inconvenience for me. And frankly, that's because we as consumers have come to expect 
faster, easier, and more hands-off ways to facilitate and receive payments whenever possible.

So again, being a payments nerd, hearing these guys' stories, they each are using our Pay Smart 
intelligent payment routing solution in very different ways. And I'm excited for them to be able to share 
their stories with you. So I guess without further ado, I'd like to present my co-speakers today, Dan and 
Conor. So I guess I'll start with you, Dan. [INAUDIBLE] who are you, what do you do, and where do you 
work?

(DESCRIPTION)
To now.

(SPEECH)
DANIEL COLLIER: So I work for Ingram Micro, I'm their payroll director. And I've been doing-- I've been in 
and out of payroll since 2005 and doing the managing since about 2017.

(DESCRIPTION)
Meet our Panelists.

(SPEECH)
JOE FLAHERTY: Great. And Conor, if you could just introduce yourself real quick.

CONOR LOGAN: Yes, my name's Conor Logan, I'm a senior accountant here at M Financial. It's a life 
insurance financial services company. Our focus has been executive benefits, insurance solutions, and 
wealth planning. I help manage our Accounts Payable Department as well as on our cash management 
team to help effectively manage our company's cash flows.

(DESCRIPTION)
Joe Flaherty.

(SPEECH)
JOE FLAHERTY: Awesome. Thank you both so much. So what are we going to even talk about today? 
So we're going to first start up with, what is intelligent payment routing? I would imagine some of you are 
or are not familiar with the concept, but we'll definitely give you the high-level summary of it as well as 
how does it fit into the overall payments experience? How does RTP plug in? Real-Time Payments, the 
newest payment rail.

And frankly, talk about how these gentlemen, along with their teams, have implemented and integrated 
the Pay Smart feature from U.S. Bank into their payables process. So very high level, Pay Smart 
intelligent payment routing, what is it?

So basically what it is it's a rules-based and automated decisioning tool that will help customers or help 
corporates identify the fastest and most cost-effective payment option for a specific payable. So what 
we've done, and if you step back and look at the way that banks have presented their payment options, 
generally you focused on one payment solution-- for instance, real-time payments, and talk about how 
can this payment solution fit into your broader payable strategy to complement your check and ACH or 
wires?

So there's been a shift specifically at the bank to focusing more on our clients' experience and making it 
easier for them to not just leverage RTP, but in a really streamlined way to benefit from same-day ACH, 
wire, ACH all under one environment. So frankly, that's what Pay Smart is. It is our intelligent payment 
routing solution that both Dan and Conor are leveraging today.

(DESCRIPTION)
Pay Smart.

(SPEECH)
So I guess as we get into it, the real meat of today is for me to shut up and allow these guys to tell their 
stories. So Conor, I'll start with you. I assume you didn't just wake up one morning and just think, oh, I've 
got to implement intelligent payment routing. So how did Pay Smart or intelligent payment routing get on 
your radar originally?

CONOR LOGAN: So we first heard about it in our 2021 relationship meeting with U.S. Bank. We heard 
about the Pay Smart real-time payment options and it definitely grabbed our attention.

JOE FLAHERTY: And I've been in many meetings where we're pitching new solutions to clients with 
mixed results. So has M Financial historically been one of the organizations that gravitates towards all the 
new payment solutions?

CONOR LOGAN: No, not quite as much, you know. And here at M, we had a traditional payment 
approach with wire transfers, ACH. And that had been working just fine, we didn't really feel the need to 
implement anything new, but again, in that meeting, seeing some of the benefits that we could have with 
real-time payment and Pay Smart specifically, it definitely grabbed our attention and we wanted to roll it 
out.

JOE FLAHERTY: Interesting. And so I guess, what specifically was it about Pay Smart that tipped the 
scale for you guys?

CONOR LOGAN: So there was two things specifically. First was the cost of real-time payments. We were 
used to spend-- or we were used to sending a variety of payments via wire. It turned out that the real-time 
payment option was roughly 10% of the cost of a wire, which was a big thing for us. But even more so 
was the added flexibility of real-time payments being a 24/7 option.

We're on the West Coast here, and with wire cut-off times, I know it's changed with the Fed recently over 
the last year, but back in 2021 when we were implementing real-time payments our cut-offs were roughly-
- I think it was like 2:30 in the afternoon. So to get a payment out same day, it's unshackled us from that 
time constraint, which was a really big factor for us.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. And that's a huge win, I mean, for all of our West Coast clients. I know that I've 
had a number of clients that always struggled-- even paying historically, paying U.S. Bank for their card 
solutions, things like that. So now as an organization, we're allowing our clients to pay us via RTP, which 
is real funds for those products and solutions.

So certainly can relate and that's feedback we've heard, and I'm sure most financial institutions have 
heard historically. So maybe you could share a little bit about-- you talked about some of the benefits. 
How exactly are you as an organization using Pay Smart? What specific use case are you leveraging?

CONOR LOGAN: Definitely. So we use Pay Smart any time we have a payment that is a non-repetitive 
payment that would go outside of the traditional accounts payable cycle. So anything that is a rushed 
payment, something of that nature, we use Pay Smart to for new payments. So if it's the first time that 
we're paying somebody and we're trying to validate what options we have, we can use Pay Smart, just 
using the account number and routing number and they'll give us every option that we have and we can 
go from there and really use what's best for us.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. It certainly makes sense. And you just hit on how does the solution work? So 
basically, as you said, you guys are able to put a payable in, or in some cases organizations can send a 
full file with the payments they want to make. And it spits back in real-time what the most optimal solution 
is. So I guess, how has that been beneficial for you and how much time has that saved on your side?

CONOR LOGAN: It's been very beneficial to be honest, Joe. I'll give you a real-life example. So recently 
we have-- our family partakes in quite a few events that we host during the course of the year, and we 
had a large deposit that we needed to make to one of these events vendors. And the deposit was 
essentially due right on signing.

And by signing them, as soon as that ink hit the paper, they wanted their deposit. The problem with that 
was that the actual signing was dragging on. So we were able to get that payment information, look into 
Pay Smart and see what options we had. Luckily real-time payment was an option, so we were able to 
coordinate with our events team and say, hey, as soon as you sign, we will be ready and we can initiate 
payment within a few minutes.

And so that was very beneficial to us as well as the events team because some of these vendors, they 
want a deposit quickly, we were able to provide that service.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. No, and that's so relevant for so many of our customers. There's always in any 
organization a situation where you need that payment to go out as fast as possible and allowing that 24 
by 7, 365 capability a really nice complement to a broader payable strategy.

(DESCRIPTION)
Payroll.

(SPEECH)
So I guess at this point, I want to shift focus. We've talked about, Conor, your use cases really with 
payables in general. Dan, yours is slightly different. Do you think you could share how you're all at Ingram 
using Pay Smart solution?

DANIEL COLLIER: Sure. We use it basically for any payment that occurs outside of the normal payroll 
process. So your regular check goes through traditional ACH processes.

But if there's anything that happens like a payroll error, or more likely, in my perspective, an HR error, or a 
termination or a stale data check or my favorite is ACH returns when somebody closes their account and 
the money bounces back to us, all we have to do is get their corrected account number and we can real-
time payment that money right back to them which really minimizes the impact to the employee, greatly 
increases their satisfaction, and allows us to quickly resolve errors or any of these other-- like a 
termination or anything outside the normal payroll process.

JOE FLAHERTY: And not that errors would ever happen within the payroll ecosystem, certainly not under 
your watch.

DANIEL COLLIER: No.

JOE FLAHERTY: But in a scenario where it did, I mean, could you imagine-- I guess for me personally, if I 
was left off the payroll cycle and didn't get paid, that would be something I would want corrected pretty 
quickly, right?

DANIEL COLLIER: It's impactful. And because my employees can see their checks on basically Tuesday 
night, we get an early alert from my employees when something goes wrong with their pay. And most 
times I can have it fixed even before regular pay day so they have their money in their account. 
Oftentimes we'll just fix it on Wednesday or Thursday, we don't really make them wait till Friday.

And it's hard to understate how impactful this has been to the organization-- the payroll organization 
because gone are the days when we're cutting paper checks and running, chasing down the FedEx guy 
and trying to get them in the last mail of the day. And then we don't make employees wait till Monday for 
the FedEx to arrive or anything like that. It's been the single most impactful change that our department's 
seen in years.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. And I know you'd mentioned previously-- and you don't need to share, yeah, how 
much cost was actually going into those FedEx payments. But from what you said, it was pretty 
meaningful, not only the benefit from an efficiency standpoint, but the cost of getting those overnight 
payments out was pretty sizable.

DANIEL COLLIER: And it's helped with our compliance, too. In California we have to pay people on the 
same day, and you don't always get the notification that you need to do the same-day payments. But now 
with real-time payments, we can deposit into their account and hit that California law a lot easier than we 
could with a paper check.

JOE FLAHERTY: And just to clarify for the audience, that's related to the termination of employees or on 
an employee's last day of termination. I guess that's a little bit more of it, but on an employee's last day 
within California to pay out the payroll in full.

DANIEL COLLIER: That is correct.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. Just wanted to make it clear. And so there was an interesting statistic that you 
shared, which I know in our practice runs I got wrong, but for outside of your generic payroll, if I recall 
correctly, for those one-off payments, you said around 75% of those payments are actually able to go on 
the RTP rails?

DANIEL COLLIER: Right. So some of the smaller banks will only allow us to use same-day ACH. So 
those payments, as long as we submit them before 11:30 Pacific, will be in the employee's account that 
same day, but 75% or so bank with larger institutions which accept this real-time payment.

(DESCRIPTION)
Easily add RTP into your payment mix with Pay Smart.

(SPEECH)
JOE FLAHERTY: Pretty impressive, specifically for a relatively new payment rail. It really just launched 
not too long ago but we are seeing some pretty widespread adoption across the spectrum, and most all 
larger banks now do offer the RTP service, so that's great. So to shift a little bit, I mean, a lot of the client 
feedback that I've gotten historically when trying to bring in new payment solutions is that it's kind of 
cumbersome, it takes up a lot of resources to change. I guess, Conor, can you share your experience 
around the implementation of the Pay Smart solution?

CONOR LOGAN: Absolutely. And yeah, I would agree with you that anytime you're making a banking 
change, sometimes it can be a little more difficult than you'd like. But for us with the Pay Smart and the 
real-time payment rollout, it was very seamless. We're already very comfortable working in SinglePoint 
when we're making ACH and wire payments.

So essentially we just fill out a few forms and all of a sudden we had a new module within SinglePoint. 
And to be honest, it's much more intuitive, I would find, than the ACH or the wire module. So very easy to 
use, very easy to implement, and just from all the benefits that there were, it was a real no-brainer for us.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. I know one of the questions that we got when people responded saying that they 
would or would not attend, one of the questions was around the controls, and what controls are you 
placing around those payments? Did you have to change anything on your side?

CONOR LOGAN: That's a good question. We actually did not, mainly because of the fact that we already 
had internal controls over the SinglePoint platform as a whole. So we already have specific controls that 
we test implement-- or initiating a payment and trying to prove it yourself as a user. So we've already 
worked with our internal department-- or audit department from a control standpoint and it was nothing 
added or extra that we had to layer in. It was already built-in, everything was already there.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. Easy enough, right?

(DESCRIPTION)
Conor nods.

(SPEECH)
Dan, can you share a little bit about how did you guys approach the implementation? If I recall, you were 
just starting very small and then just turning the-- turn the volume up, right?

DANIEL COLLIER: Yeah, I thought we would test it on a few California employee terminations just to roll 
it out slowly and carefully and make sure that we understood the impact and that, I don't know, that we 
were using it properly. Just trying to be cautious. And after a few of these, we looked at each other and 
thought, well, why the heck are we not using this for all our one-off payments? And we've been off and 
running since then.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. And frankly, to Conor's point, I found the solution really does make it easier for 
our clients to do the initiation. And when you're not having to change the controls that you already have in 
place, that you've refined over years, it's just another checkbox that-- one less thing to worry about, right?

So I guess when you were considering real-time payment, I mean, was there a driving factor? Was there 
a top-down initiative that said, we need to figure out a way to pay faster? Or how did-- I guess, what was 
your experience? Why did you start using RTP?

DANIEL COLLIER: I started using it just-- it was a fluke. I was having a meeting with my relationship 
manager. We're a relatively new customer to U.S. Bank. And I said, what other solutions do you have that 
might be useful to a payroll customer? And they said, well, as a matter of fact, we have a way of 
depositing money into somebody's account instantly, and of course, that just gets my attention really fast.

JOE FLAHERTY: Especially with payroll, right?

DANIEL COLLIER: Right.

JOE FLAHERTY: So we did-- we got a couple questions around control specifically. And I understand 
that you guys both-- neither of you really had to change your controls to leverage this solution. But maybe 
if one of you could share, do you have multi-tier approvals that are implemented for these payments to go 
out? Or what's your approach to control in general for this or even other payment methods that can be 
helpful?

CONOR LOGAN: Yeah, I can take that, Joe. Based on our prior approvals with ACH and wires, it was 
very similar. So we have one specific-- or we have one person that initiates a payment, and then it's part 
of the control that's already built into SinglePoint that another person makes that approval. And real-time 
payments were no different. So it was a very seamless changeover to real-time payment, and it was 
already something that we were used to. So there wasn't a lot of learning curve.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah, that makes sense. And we did get another proactive question that was more 
around fraud and security and challenges that could arise with any payment. So that's fair. Have either of 
you experienced any sort of fraud or anything like that?

CONOR LOGAN: Not with real-time payments, no. I think that was an initial concern just because one of 
the benefits of real-time payment is it's nearly instantaneous, but because of that, there's no revoking a 
wire-- or there's no revoking the real-time payments similar to those other-- those methods. So we knew 
that we had to be careful always, but that's already part of our process.

(DESCRIPTION)
Daniel Collier.

(SPEECH)
DANIEL COLLIER: In my opinion, it reduces the chance of fraud because when I send out paper checks, 
I've had experiences where people take these paper checks and copy them or try to deposit them twice, 
especially with mobile deposit. You take a picture of it and you deposit it, then you walk it into the bank. 
Real-time payments eliminates all of that. I send the money to them and I'm done.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. And that's a good point. And then I guess to speak from the bank's perspective, 
we, of course, were required and are required with the RTP rails to provide some sort of protection. And 
so I guess just for the broader audience, in the event-- and it hasn't been my experience yet that there's 
been any sort of fraud or widespread fraud, but there is a request for return of funds that's available 
through the portal itself.

And we have, frankly, heard of a lot of success with getting the funds back through that process. So there 
is a formal process to approach that. But yeah, our experience certainly has been that it does mitigate the 
risk of fraud, especially relative to some of the other payment methods out there.

(DESCRIPTION)
Why consider Pay Smart for your business.

(SPEECH)
So I guess we do have a couple questions that I see, but as we get ready to shift to the Q&A portion, I 
guess change is hard, and Conor, I think you alluded to it at the start of the session today. I guess any 
thoughts on things you did well or things you could have done differently during the implementation? I 
know it was pretty easy, but why were you so successful?

CONOR LOGAN: There wasn't much that I would change. Maybe just implementing it sooner. To be 
honest, it's been such a benefit to us. Wish we had it a long time ago. But again, it was very seamless. 
We were already so familiar with SinglePoint and initiating payments that way that there really wasn't 
much of a change, it felt like. So again, everything is very smooth and it's been a huge success.

JOE FLAHERTY: And I do want to read off-- so there is a question in the Q&A, which, by the way, anyone 
can add questions to the Q&A. You should see it at the top bar of your screen. So if you do have any 
questions that you'd like us to cover, please feel free to put them in there. But one of the questions that I 
see is, how does this work with EEs who don't have bank accounts? So I guess Dan, do you want to 
cover that one?

DANIEL COLLIER: Yeah. The real-time payment solution requires a bank account. That being said, in the 
payroll space, we offer a pay card to our employees that's a separate payment mechanism that allows 
people to receive their pay on a prepaid debit card, essentially. That's the most straightforward solution to 
an unbanked individual.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yep. That makes sense. And I know that one of the questions leading up to the session 
as well was around, OK, we found out that someone doesn't accept our RTP. Are there validation 
services that are available to confirm whether or not someone can accept-- not a check, but an ACH or a 
wire? And I did just want to plug that U.S. Bank does offer a service called Validation Services ABS which 
would do that for our clients. It's not the same solution as this, but it could be used in parallel.

And another question that I see came through, does this integrate or connect to any ERP systems for 
processing? I know that neither of you are using any ERP connectivity through us, but I guess from the 
bank's perspective, our response would be, certainly you are able to get a file exported out of your ERP to 
initiate these payments. We do not have the API connectivity with any of the major ERPs today, though 
that certainly is a focus for the bank because at the end of the day, we're just looking to make things more 
seamless for our clients.

All right, so here's a good one. So a PIN number's required to initiate a wire. Is it required for RTP? 
Conor, I see you nodding.

CONOR LOGAN: It is not as far as I know. There is the same security logins in terms of-- similar to a wire 
where you have to use your token to log into the module, but there is no wire PIN required, which is a 
good question. We're actually trying to get somebody set up that's new to our cash management team 
with wire entitlements just in the case that we need to, and he's been set up on real-time payments for 
much longer than he has on wire because it's so much easier to get that set up.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. Yeah, great response. Another question here. How do you handle cash 
forecasting? My understanding is that if you have RTP, then any payments you initiate that are at your 
bank are sent real-time. Dan, do you want to cover that one?

DANIEL COLLIER: It'd probably be better for Conor because he's dealing with larger amounts of cash 
than I am. But yes, it's taken out of your account right then and put into the other person's account right 
then. We keep our payroll account slightly overfunded to cover outstanding checks, so it's never a 
problem for us, but Conor, you're moving larger amounts of money than I am.

CONOR LOGAN: Yeah, we maintain a separate forecasting file that has all the ins and outs flows 
amongst our various subsidiaries. In terms of how that fits into the real-time payment, I think we typically 
use-- we try to identify any large outgoing payments that may need a very timely execution or things of 
that nature.

But it is a good point that with real-time payments, you do have-- it is instantaneous. You can't really 
schedule the payment precise. So there are a few other payments that we do have that we have relied 
on, our traditional ACH approach because they're a little bit more cumbersome and we want them to be 
scheduled and they have to go through the approval process days before initiating. So yeah, that is 
something to note.

(DESCRIPTION)
New slide, Questions.

(SPEECH)
JOE FLAHERTY: Great input from both of you. Can Pay Smart be integrated into our pre-existing 
standalone iOS or Android apps or desktop? Yeah. I guess I have my response. Do either of you want to 
cover that one?

CONOR LOGAN: We don't use-- I don't think that applies to us as much. We're all just through the 
desktop at SinglePoint.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. So my understanding is SinglePoint is dynamic, so it would be able to be used 
through iOS or Android devices or iPad, whatever device you're going to be using. It is integrated into our 
SinglePoint Suite.

(DESCRIPTION)
Daniel Collier.

(SPEECH)
DANIEL COLLIER: The last time I used the SinglePoint app on the phone, if this is what this question is 
referring to, it says no, you've got to use the desktop version. I wonder if this question is about processing 
payments using apps, but it's hard to know.

JOE FLAHERTY: So perhaps if whoever asked that question wanted to provide clarity, go ahead and 
drop that in the Q&A and we'll look at another question and circle back to it. Would you use Pay Smart to 
pay all your payables?

(DESCRIPTION)
Conor Logan.

(SPEECH)
CONOR LOGAN: Interesting. I think you could. I know for us, we have a very standard accounts payable 
cycle, and payments are oftentimes in excess of $1,000,000 of a batch to a various number of recipients. 
So I think from just a standard traditional accounts payable perspective, we do the standard ACH file that 
seems to be working for us.

Again, that's typically for bills or anything that falls within that time frame of when it's due. But going back 
to Pay Smart or real-time payment, any time that something is a rush or is outside of the calendar or the 
scope of the AP run, then we'll typically go through that route.

JOE FLAHERTY: Can you remind me what the dollar limit is on RTP? That's a great question because it's 
just changed.

DANIEL COLLIER: It's a million, I believe.

JOE FLAHERTY: Yeah. So it was recently updated to a million, which, frankly, brings all new payment 
initiation activities into scope. Historically what we found was that the limit was a little bit low, specific, 
Conor, more for your use case where there are larger dollar transactions coming in and out. So it is now 
$1,000,000 which I know our clients are appreciating, and it's really helped with the adoption as well, 
specifically for larger dollar payments use cases more specific to payables.

So Dan, I'm sure you'd love to see million-dollar payouts going out of your payroll department. All right. So 
we are at the top of the hour. So I do want to thank both Dan and Conor so much for your time. We love 
doing this sort of event. And thank all of you for attending. If you do have any questions, please feel free 
to send them after the fact.

And don't forget, there's going to be a survey that's dropped in for you all. So please feel free to respond 
and give us some feedback on what you'd like to hear next and any thoughts on the session today. That 
will also be sent to you via email. So thank you all, and we'll check in with you again in our next session.

(DESCRIPTION)
US Bank. Thank you for attending today. Don't forget to share your thoughts and experiences with use in 
the post call survey.

The live event has ended.