PayTo is a revolutionary new service allowing businesses to initiate real-time payments from their customers’ bank accounts. It ensures payments will be more efficient, faster, and less complicated for businesses and consumers than traditional direct debit payments, all while providing assurance of funds. Zai allows businesses to plug seamlessly into the PayTo service.

Zai was first to market in Australia with real-time payment solutions, and was also the first company to waive fees for businesses signing up to its PayTo solution for the first 12 months - with customers from across multiple sectors already integrated and live.

This partnership with Cuscal allows Zai to provide a consistent managed payment service with control of the end-to-end process, putting Zai in a stronger position to add value to its customers.

Through the partnership, payments can be settled and cleared within one ecosystem, which may not be the case for direct integrations into the New Payments Platform (NPP) for PayTo. This also allows Zai to specialise on scaling its solution, honing its functionality and providing an excellent customer experience.

Jose Barroso, Country Manager ANZ, Zai said: “This partnership is a key pillar in Zai delivering a focused, excellent experience for our customers when PayTo fully rolls out in Australia. This timing is especially significant given the recent announcement that three of the four major Australian banks have committed to switching on PayTo by the Reserve Bank’s revised deadline of April 2023, with Commonwealth Bank having switched on last September. ”

“By partnering with a specialist like Cuscal, our customers will get the best of both worlds. Excellent service and support from Zai in conjunction with rich integration and understanding of services like PayTo and PayIDTM provided by Cuscal. Payments is a complex space, and this ensures that our solution isn’t stretched thin when PayTo ramps up.”

Speaking on the partnership, Nathan Churchward, Domain Lead Payments, Cuscal, said: “Working with Zai is a great fit for Cuscal as we both have a long track record as early adopters and innovators in payment solutions and operating models. We are proud to enable Zai’s access to the NPP for PayTo and PayIDTM, supporting all current and future payment options and flows in a single solution.”

The partnership comes ahead of the anticipated ramp up of PayTo. One of the first customers to sign up to PayTo and launch through Zai is Rentaaa, an all-in-one automation solution for rental businesses.

Jasdeep Sandhu, CTO & Founder at Rentaaa, commented: “As a business focused on creating customised solutions to reduce operational management tasks and costs, it’s extremely important for us to source the strongest products on the market to streamline our own services.”

“With Zai’s PayTo solution, not only are we getting a great product that suits our business needs and allows us to provide a new real-time direct debit option to our customers, we are also getting excellent support from the dedicated team at Zai - making implementation much easier. We are excited to grow our relationship with Zai as PayTo becomes more widely adopted this year.

In anticipation of PayTo’s continued rollout and ramp up in 2023[NC1] , Zai has extended its offer to deliver PayTo services to new customers for free for 12 months.