Guide to bulk payment system in India: Types, features & benefits

Standard domestic bulk payments occur when businesses make a domestic payment to multiple recipients from a single debit account. There are a few subtypes of this type of payment system.

• Immediate bulk payments (IBULK): As the name suggests, these payments are processed immediately after you have created payments for the bulk list.

• Next-day bulk payments (NBULK): A next-day bulk payment will credit the payment recipients in a bulk payment system the day after the payment has been made.

• Future dated bulk payments (FBULK): If you’re looking to schedule your payments for a later date, you can do that with future-dated bulk payments to streamline the payment process. 

While standard domestic bulk payments are limited to domestic payments, you can also use bulk payment systems to make international transfers.

The bulk inter-account transfer (IAT) method allows you to send funds to multiple international accounts in one go through a single debit account.

Even though commonly used for international transfers, you can also do bulk IAT payments domestically.

The IAT bulk payment system is a streamlined process that is reliable, secure, and fast. One of its biggest advantages over other types is that you can make bulk inter-account transfers through different technologies.

However, it can be a bit of a complicated process depending on your business’s geographic location and the target demographic of your transfers. Regardless, it’s a useful payment system when making a lot of international payments.

There’s no denying that making a large number of payments takes a lot of time. Bulk payment systems can help speed up this process.

This is especially useful for recurring monthly payments, as you would otherwise be wasting a lot of time each month. 

When processing your payroll, for example, you can save a lot of time by utilizing your bulk list and paying in one go.

You can not only quickly make many transfers at once, but you can also schedule future bulk payments to ensure that all your payables are paid in a timely manner.

Time is not the only thing that you can save by using bulk payment systems. You’ll also save energy and free yourself up from doing tedious and repetitive tasks.

Saving yourself a few clicks on each payment can easily add up when you have hundreds of payments to make. Whenever necessary, you can simply make quick changes to your bulk list.

When all the payment information is presented in one place, you can also easily check over your list before processing all the payments.

You can save on transaction fees when paying in batches. If you have a lot of payments that you have to make, these transaction fees can easily add up when processed individually.

As you’ll be saving on time and effort when doing bulk payments, it is also ultimately more cost-effective when you consider the cost of time wasted on individual payments.

Bulk payment systems have technology that ensures the security of your transfer information. Technology like Secured Sockets Layer, or SSL, will scramble your data as soon as it is submitted.

This guarantees that it cannot be read and stolen during the payment process. Not only that, but you also can detect errors or fraud attempts clearly with bulk payments.

If you make payments around the same large amount of funds each month, any discrepancies can be easily spotted month by month.

As paying in bulk or batches requires a platform that can handle large numbers of transactions in one go, bank transfers can be the answer to facilitate bulk payment systems.

Most banks nowadays will have corporate bulk payments available for corporate clients. Oftentimes you’ll be directed to the bank’s Internet banking portal, where you can then upload your bulk list to make your payments. 

However, bank transfers come with a lot of limitations. The processing on Internet banking portals, for example, is often only limited to the bank’s working hours.

You also run into the risk of your bank of choice not supporting Excel or CSV formats for your bulk list, meaning that you’ll have to convert your bulk list beforehand, which often can’t be done without assistance.

Considering the limitations of bank transfers, many fintech companies have started offering a popular alternative for bulk payment systems in the form of payouts.

Many payout platforms have a big range of payment options, which bank transfers are often limited by. You can also make payments at any time of day, as they aren’t tied to the operating hours of a particular bank.

While payouts sound like a much better option compared to bank transfers, there’s a limitation in the form of cost.

Most traditional corporate bank accounts are free to open, while there might be a one-time or subscription fee that you have to pay to access payout services.

Another popular method for bulk payments in India is through Universal Payment Interface, more commonly known as UPI, transfers. You can send money to any virtual UPI ID.

You can also automatically schedule your payments to improve the process further. Some UPI payment platforms, however, are likely to have a limit on daily transactions.

This can be in the form of a monetary limit or a limit on how many transfers you can make per day. If you choose to do bulk UPI transfers, make sure that you know what the existing limits are.

One of the many uses of bulk payment systems is to make customer refunds. A popular method to do these refund payments is through credit or debit card payments.

When a customer purchases a product on their debit card but then requests a refund, for example, you’ll refund the same card that they used.

The problem with this refund method is that in some cases, you’re reliant on your banking provider to first verify the funds in your bank account before processing the payments.

The process itself can also take up to 3-7 business days. Moreover, you can only issue a refund according to what your customer paid and cannot provide additional compensation with this method.