With over 105,000 vehicles sold each year, Alcopa Auction is France's leading used car auction operator. Its customers, both private individuals and professionals, have access to a wide choice of vehicles via one of its 7 auction rooms or directly online. Bruno Bloquet, Administrative and Financial Director, talks about the deployment of Fintecture's Intelligent Transfer solution to streamline their operations.
What payment issues did you face?
In our sector, the buying process is characterized by the following specific features: payment in 2 stages (a deposit prior to the sale, then the balance when the auction is awarded), a payment period limited to 8 days (maximum duration after which the customer loses the sale) and high amounts, with an average basket in excess of 6,000 euros. As a result, we receive a large number of payments by bank transfer, but also by credit card when the amount permits. Some customers sometimes use several cards to get round the problem of CB limits. This practice is not without consequences, both for our costs and for our fraud detection processes.
Important point: the customer must have paid before he can collect his vehicle. In fact, payment by bank transfer put pressure on our teams: only the accounting department had visibility of payment execution. The identification of the payer, manual in many cases, slowed down the finalization of the sale. For counter operators, it was impossible to release the vehicle without validation from the accounts department. With between 350 and 500 transfers per day, we were facing a real bottleneck. I couldn't see any solution other than adding to the team responsible for reconciliation.
How do you use Fintecture Smart Transfer?
The Intelligent Transfer Fintecture enables us to automatically identify the customer behind each transfer, thanks to a personalized IBAN. Once the sale has been awarded, an operator immediately creates a customer ID, which enables us to generate a personalized IBAN directly on the proforma invoice delivered to the buyer by hand, or by e-mail for online sales. In the case of recurrent buyers, who represent a significant proportion of our professional clientele, the operator retrieves the ID so that the customer uses the same personalized IBAN.
We chose to integrate Fintecture directly into our business tools. This has meant that we haven't had to change the way our operators work, since they are face-to-face with customers and have to manage a large flow of sales in a very short space of time. As far as customers are concerned, the payment procedure has remained unchanged. Only our recurring buyers had to change our RIB, but this was done naturally, without any specific support.
What results are you seeing?
The introduction of Fintecture has solved the problem of payment identification. After several months of collaboration, we have seen how robust and reliable these tools are. We can now instantly link each transfer received to the corresponding proforma invoice. But the results actually go much further than this automated reconciliation: Fintecture has enabled us to decentralize payment tracking and improve customer satisfaction.
Our auction room operators can now view transfers received and the corresponding buyer in real time. They no longer have to wait for the return from the accounting department. This has had an unexpected consequence: the proportion of instant transfers has risen from 5% to 37%! We are now able to finalize the sale file in half a day, which was impossible before Fintecture because of the processing times and the back and forth with the accounting department.
Our customers can collect their lot on the same day as the sale, reducing waiting time and associated costs. And they're delighted! In fact, at the outset, we hadn't anticipated this: our logistics teams found themselves overwhelmed and unprepared for having to deliver vehicles so quickly! We have since readjusted our organization and gained in fluidity. In the end, it was technology, via this payment solution, that led us to digitalize and improve our internal processes, in the service of greater customer satisfaction.
To find out more about our instant reconciliation solutions and discover how they can transform your payment management, contact us today!
