The Hera Group has signed an agreement with Unicredit for the development of a "Virtual Account" service in order to improve payments and accounting management.
The agreement requires the bank to generate 6 million dedicated "virtual" Ibans which Hera - the first company in Italy to do so on a large scale - will make available to each customer via a communication in the bill or invoice. The customer will thus also be able to pay from his own internet banking, with automatic and unambiguous recognition of the payment. Unicredit will then credit the current account of the multi-utility with all incoming transfers, regardless of the type, and will send the company a statement of the operations carried out.
In addition to the "virtual" IBAN system, Hera is developing additional mobile payment methods for its customers, such as digital wallets, for example.
The initiative is part of the digitization process of infrastructures and services that the Hera Group has previously started.
“Innovation is one of the five strategic pillars on which the industrial plan of the Hera Group is based – explained Stefano Venier, Hera's Chief Executive Officer -. In 2017 alone, we invested 78 million euros in projects dedicated to the diffusion of digitization, in areas such as smart cities, data analytics, business intelligence, Utility 4.0, circular economy and customer experience. We are already the most digital utility among the 13 examined by a survey by Utilitatis, but that's not enough for us. The services sector is constantly evolving and has to face, every day, an audience of digital natives who enter the market with new paradigms and ways of consuming. Transactions and value chains are increasingly moving to smart channels and this is why agreements such as the one concluded with UniCredit are crucial for making a qualitative leap and intercepting the needs of our customers".
“We are very satisfied to have brought to the market with Hera, for the first time on such a large scale, a product innovation such as Virtual Account which optimizes the payment reconciliation process for companies, allowing them to obtain tangible advantages in one of the fundamental aspects of treasury activity” he commented Luca Corsini, Head of Global Transaction Banking at UniCredit. “The agreement with Hera – he continued – is the result of a consolidated relationship with the company, which has recently seen us at its side also in the first green loan entered into by an Italian company, and represents a concrete example of UniCredit's ability to seize the potential offered by digitization to offer customers effective solutions for the various needs related to payments".
