Creative procrastination in action

Show dogs dressed in sporting apparel; 200 snails with LED lights strapped to their backs; a man wearing a suit made from bubble wrap; what on earth do these things have to do with using BPAY?

At BPAY, we believe wasting time in awesome ways should be celebrated. That's why we created The World's Biggest Most Awesome Waste of Time competition. The idea behind the current youth campaign is intended to resonate with our target audience (18-25 year olds): when you have bills to pay, you can pay them online quickly, easily and securely with BPAY, leaving university-aged students plenty of time to do other, much more awesome things. Perhaps surprising news to some, research has suggested that many students line up to make payments at the post office. Hence the launch of the Biggest Most Awesome Waste of Time Competition, which kicked off during University O-Week 2010. This is completely new territory for BPAY and we had a ball!

This campaign is very different from any other marketing activity BPAY have undertaken in the past, primarily because it is the first time we are speaking to a young audience, as they are not traditional users of BPAY. The objective is to ensure that BPAY is on the radar of the next generation of bill payers so that BPAY becomes the first choice for bill payments in the future.

Three original videos were created to inspire the target audience and exemplify time wasting in the most awesome ways:

• CRATES - stop motion photography involving milk crates, a man and eventually an awesome sea monster;
• BUBBLE-WRAP MAN - follow Bubble Wrap Man on his mission to pop all of his bubbles; and
• SNAILS - watch 200 snails with LED lights strapped to their backs in fast forward.

Once at the microsite, www.awesometimewasting.com.au, BPAY encouraged the target audience to submit their most awesome time wasting idea to be in the running to win a MacBook Pro and have their awesome time wasting idea formed into a professionally produced video. The runner up prize is a 32GB iPod Touch. There has been an incredibly positive response with over 670 entries having been submitted. These have been narrowed down to 5 entries, which have now been placed on the microsite to be voted on.

As part of the campaign, BPAY sent roaming bubble-wrapped teams of students to the largest University Campuses in Sydney and Melbourne and awarded students who exemplified awesome time wasting with spot prizes. Not only did it make students curious and laugh, it engaged them with the competition and led them to visit the website and enter their ideas. We received an incredibly positive response and a 'that's a pretty cool idea' from most of the students on campus.

Results of the campaign

The campaign achieved results far beyond our targets or expectations. The total number of visits to date (as per beginning of May) to the www.awesometimewasting.com.au website are 64,421 visitors, with absolute unique site visits at an impressive 56,309 visitors. The total number of entries to the competition was a whopping 677!

The amount of Australian views recorded on YouTube of the videos to date are:

• Snail Art - 23,417
• Bubble Wrap Man - 11,404
• Milk Crate Sea Monster - 16,676

And interestingly, the BPAY youth campaign also attracted international attention with over 100,000 international views of the videos. Pretty awesome!

Important changes in the financial services industry

There has been a significant amount of change in the banking and financial services industry that may impact both BPAY Members and Billers as new legislation is expected to come in this year.

In this article, we have highlighted the key regulatory changes that may affect BPAY stakeholders in the coming months.

1. ASIC Review of the EFT Code of Conduct

ASIC expects that its final report on the EFT Code will be made available in the second half of 2010, with the redrafted Plain English EFT Code to be released shortly thereafter. It is expected that ASIC will include a mistaken payments regime in the redrafted EFT Code. While not confirmed, ASIC has indicated that it will most likely exempt BPAY from the EFT Code's mistaken payments regime, being of the view that BPAY's existing processes offer significant consumer protections. BPAY will continue to monitor developments.

2. Unfair Contracts Law

On 17 March 2010 the Trade Practices Amendment (Australian Consumer Law) Act (No. 1) 2010 was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament.

This Act contains the unfair contracts law, which will take effect from the commencement of the Act, currently envisaged to be 1 July 2010.

This means that for any standard form consumer contract entered into or renewed after 1 July 2010, any term of that contract that is unfair will be void (although the rest of the contract will continue to operate if it is capable of operating without the unfair term).

3. Australian Consumer Law (ACL)

On 17 March 2010, the Government also introduced the Trade Practices Amendment (Australian Consumer Law) Bill (No. 2) 2010.

This Bill moves all the consumer protection sections of the Trade Practices Act to the ACL and adds new sections regulating unsolicited selling and lay-bys.

The Act also creates a national system of statutory consumer guarantees and a national consumer product safety law, including national bans and recalls.

4. Privacy

Australian privacy laws are in the process of a radical overhaul. The final Australian Law Reform Commission Report 108 "For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice" (Privacy Report) was released publicly in August 2008, the Commonwealth Government released its response to the Report in October 2009 and legislation is expected to be introduced in late 2010.

The key features of the first stage of the Commonwealth Government's proposed privacy reforms are expected to include:

• new unified privacy principles to replace the national privacy principles and information privacy principles, and which will apply to both the private sector organisations and public sector agencies;
• significant new powers for the Privacy Commissioner;
• a new credit reporting regulation; and
• provisions for ensuring technological neutrality.

5. Anti-Money Laundering

There have been recent changes to the current Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) regime in Australia which relate to the definitions of "stored value card" and "designated remittance arrangements".

The proposed changes, which took effect on 20 February 2010, have extended the scope of the current AML/CTF regime.

BPAY will continue to update its Members and Billers periodically with regulatory changes in the financial services space.

Read about the successful take up of BPAY View

The Water Corporation, based in Western Australia, launched with BPAY View in January 2010 and both BPAY and Water Corporation are pleased to announce it is working really well. In just four months, 5000 customers have signed up with an average of 2,452 hits to the website per day!

The Water Corporation achieved a rapid take up of BPAY View due to a clever campaign that ran from December 2009 to mid March 2010 called 'Switch to BPAY View and win', encouraging customers to register to receive their bills online. Customers who registered to receive their bills using BPAY View before 15 March 2010 were entered into the draw to win one of three $1,000 ANZ VISA gift vouchers, courtesy of the Water Corporation. To maximise exposure of the competition, a flyer was sent with each customer's water bill, a banner was displayed on their website for the duration of the competition and it was advertised in local newspapers.

The Water Corporation website provided easy to understand information on how to sign up to BPAY View. The Water Corporation is planning to use the opportunity of announcing the winners of the competition in local newspapers as another means to promote the Water Corporation's electronic billing option through BPAY View.

"Introducing BPAY View enabled us to provide a solution to our customer's demand for an electronic billing option. The simplicity of presenting a bill that looks exactly the same as it does through the post meant ease of use for customers after they changed over to BPAY View. Read the bill, set the due date for payment and it's all done without leaving the lounge room! Electronic billing also reduces paper use, so it is good for the environment and in line with our Zero Footprint commitment," commented Pamela Mearns, Project Manager, Water Corporation.

The new BPAY Training Program Phase 3 DVD and the new BPAY Biller Tutorial

BPAY is pleased to announce that Phase Three of the BPAY Training Program will be available to Members this quarter. Phase Three comprises of a DVD with all BPAY Training materials including updates to Phase Two materials such as the Legal and Regulatory presentations and the BPAY Overview Tutorial. It also includes an updated version of the BPAY Operations Training Program on the same DVD.

The BPAY Operations Training is currently only available online. We received feedback from our members that a DVD is a popular medium for training because it doesn't require Internet access and it enables maximum reach and usage by Member staff. The DVD will contain the new and updated 'How to Guides' for the Release 4 Portal changes. All updated Modules and Training will also be available via BLINK.

When available, the Phase Three BPAY Training Program DVD will be sent to all Members and existing Training contacts. If anyone would like a DVD or assistance with Training please contact Gill Brown at gbrown@bpay.com.au or (02) 9646 9215.

Getting Started with BPAY Biller Tutorial

We completed Member testing of the Biller Tutorial in early March and we are pleased to report that the feedback was very positive. The final version will be available to Members by the third quarter of 2010.

The BPAY Biller Tutorial is an essential training and support tool for new Billers. It has been clearly designed with a more sophisticated navigation, allowing Billers to use it not only for training, but also as a reference tool. Billers will be able to search for key items within the Tutorial using the easy menu navigation.

The key objectives of the Tutorial are:

• to give a comprehensive overview for new Billers;
• to provide the information Billers need to effectively manage BPAY within their organisations;
• to increase the confidence and knowledge levels of key Biller staff when talking to their own customers about BPAY; and
• to include relevant content for Biller personnel across their own Sales, Product Management and Operations teams.

The Tutorial is generic and can be utilised across all Scheme Members and Billers. It has the option of being re-branded by Billers and made available on a Member's or Biller's extranet/E-Learning system. It will also be made available to Members via the Biller section of the BPAY Website and Members can load it onto their own customer facing website, if required.

Currently in development, we are also planning a Tutorial targeted at existing BPAY Billers which will include key information, for example: issues to think about when making changes to systems; Biller Master File information; Mistaken; Unauthorised and Unpostable Payments and the Customer Reference Number (CRN).

If you would like more information about Training, please contact Gill Brown, BPAY Training Manager, at gbrown@bpay.com.au or (02) 9646 9215.

Reaching record high payments in one day!

Think you can achieve a lot in 24 hours? We can too. March 2 was a very busy day in the life of BPAY - one for the record books in fact.

We processed a massive $2,276,495,997 worth of payments and a staggering 1,680,633 bills. It's a sign of our rapid rate of growth given that on the same day five years ago the value of payments processed was just $974,343,363.

So what could you do with $2,276,495,997?

It's also equivalent to almost one sixth of the total value of lost super funds in Australia.

Our record day proves that the sky's the limit for BPAY.

Working with our partners reaps rewards

BPAY is highly proactive in partnering with financial institutions and billers to promote its services to the broader consumer base. It's an integral part of our marketing plan, designed to increase the volume of BPAY payments made. And the results speak for themselves...

BPAY is the fastest growing payment channel for the ATO. In March the ATO launched its presence on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au). Timed to coincide with BAS due dates, the following tweet went out "Pay your tax bill the easy way. Use BPAY. Go to http://www.ato.gov.au to find out how". The media attention generated by this activity has moved the option of using BPAY onto the radar of ATO clients.

The Department of Transport WA promoted to its customer base the availability of BPAY as an easy way to pay a range of Invoices/Notices, which predominately included vehicle and driver's licence renewals. It distributed flyers highlighting the easy use of BPAY in order to "stay on the road". The campaign launched in September 2009, two weeks prior to BPAY being made available as a payment option and 391,441 payments have been received to 30th April, 2010.

The Water Corporation began offering BPAY View to its customers at the outset of 2010, and, as proof of its success, in just four months 5,000 people have signed up. A recent campaign encouraging consumers to switch to BPAY View was highly successful in achieving this rapid take up rate. Further details about this campaign, and the mutual benefits BPAY View is delivering to the Water Corporation and its customers, are highlighted in article 3 of this newsletter.

Since launching with BPAY View in December last year, the Gold Coast City Council has recorded just under 1,500 registrations, a significant achievement in less than six months.

To promote its new partnership with BPAY's electronic billing service, the Council distributed flyers at its customer service branches and included a BPAY View article and competition in its rates newsletter. The competition gave ratepayers the chance to win $5,000 simply by registering to receive their Gold Coast City Council rate notice via BPAY View, successfully converting ratepayers to the service.

If you would like to run a campaign to promote the use of BPAY or BPAY View, please contact the BPAY Marketing Department at marketing@bpay.com.au.