TrueLayer Introduces Payment Links to Facilitate Omnichannel Purchases

TrueLayer

TrueLayer has introduced payment links to make getting paid easier and more convenient.

Payment links are URLs, buttons or QR codes that enable businesses to accept payments from customers via almost any channel, including SMS, social media, email and in-person, the open banking firm said in a Monday (July 24) blog post.

“Payment links can be used by any business that wants to facilitate easy, fast purchases online,” TrueLayer said in the post.

This payment option is especially useful for small businesses that don’t have a payment infrastructure, B2B businesses that want to get paid faster by embedding payment links in invoicing emails, businesses with a focus on channel-specific marketing, and businesses that want to process in-person payments without additional hardware, according to the announcement.

The setup requires minimal developer resources, and the application programming interface (API) integration can be completed in as little as 48 hours, the company said. Businesses create the payment link, add it to existing systems such as customer relationship management (CRM) or point of sale (POS), and instantly grant customers the ability to pay from any device.

Payment links from TrueLayer offer coverage of up to 99% in the United Kingdom and 96% across key European markets, per the release. In the coming months, TrueLayer will continue to add new features to payments links such as customizable URLs and the ability to re-share links.

Luke Crooks, director at Solent Wholesale Carpets, a company that has integrated payment links, said in the blog post: “With TrueLayer’s payment links, we can automatically send invoice payment requests from our CRM, and the payments settle in real time. We’ve been able to save on payment processing costs vs cards. Plus, the end-to-end integration time took less than 48 hours.”

In another recent deployment of payment links, GoDaddy announced in February that it has bundled payment technology and domains to create branded pay links. With these Payable Domains, businesses with a newly registered or existing domain can start accepting payments even if they don’t have a website or an online store or publish content.

Two months earlier, in December 2022, Swedish FinTech Zimpler launched its Paylink solution that allows businesses to send electronic invoices with a payment link attached that enables clients to make payments directly from their bank accounts.

CFPB Bans Medical Debt From Consumer Credit Reports

Medical debt will no longer appear on consumers’ credit reports under a new government rule.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s newly-finalized regulation, announced by the White House Tuesday (Jan. 7), will remove $49 billion in medical debt from more than 15 million Americans’ credit reports.

That means lenders will no longer be able to factor medical debt into decisions about mortgages or car loans.

“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in the White House announcement, adding that the rule would be “lifechanging” for millions of households.

The CFPB says the rule change will raise affected consumers’ credit scores by 20 points on average and could lead to 22,000 additional mortgage approvals each year. The White House also notes that several state and local governments have eliminated roughly $1 billion in medical debt for their residents, with that figure on track to reach $7 billion by the end of 2026.

Research from the CFPB finds that medical bills are “poor predictors” of someone’s ability to repay loans, and that medical bills “are often confusing and erroneous,” the announcement said.

A report by the regulator from 2022 estimated that medical bills accounted for $88 billion in debt on consumers’ credit reports. In the wake of the CFPB’s findings, the three main credit reporting agencies announced they would stop including paid medical debts, unpaid medical debts less than a year old, and medical debt under $500 from credit reporting.

“Despite these voluntary changes, 15 million Americans still have $49 billion in outstanding medical bills in collections appearing in the credit reporting system,” the announcement noted.

The change could be good news for the millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to pay their bills. As PYMNTS wrote last month, a little more than half of this group had no readily available savings.

Meanwhile, research last year from PYMNTS Intelligence found that unexpected medical bills were among the most common unplanned expenses for consumers, costing them an average of about $6,200.

“Our study found that credit-marginalized consumers — those who have been rejected for at least one credit product in the past year — are 47% more likely than the average consumer to face unexpected expenses,” PYMNTS wrote last spring. “And, because of their credit-challenged status, they are more than twice as likely to turn to high-interest credit products to cover emergency costs.”