Dutch fintech Mail to Pay acquires POM, a Belgian digital payments provider.

Mail to Pay, a Dutch robotic process automation startup targeting debt collection procedures, has acquired its Belgian fintech peer POM, a provider of digital payment services, and now seeks to combine the two operations under POM's brand in Belgium.

After the acquisition, POM's Belgian customers will gain access to the Mail to Pay functionality for their invoicing workloads, allowing them to automate and personalise debt reminders.

RPA's adoption has soared in the world of finance and commerce due to its ability to remove menial and repetitive tasks from operator workloads. With the arrival of new machine learning models, the scope for RPA is expected to escalate further.

POM's digital billing solution is used by the likes of Bolt and Belgian mail carrier Bpost to collect payments from customers.

It incorporates a range of payment functionalities, across both paper-based and digital channels, such as QR payment codes that can be scanned via the payer's smartphone camera, and payment URLs circulated by text message. 

POM says its QR payments and text messages ensure as many as 40% of debtors pay up within 24 hours of receiving a payment request.

When combined with Mail to Pay's debt collection software, the system will be able to draw on algorithms, machine learning and personalisation to ensure debtors are approached "at the most suitable time", and with the "appropriate tone of voice."

Customers may also receive access to Mail to Pay dashboard business intelligence tools, providing a holistic oversight of financial receivables to their business from day to day.

Kees Neven, CEO of Mail to Pay Group, said: "With POM and Mail to Pay, we bring two leading technology companies together under one roof.

"The combination of innovative payment solutions and automated credit management creates new opportunities for organizations to receive payments more smoothly, efficiently and in a more customer-friendly way.”