Automated Settlement Reconciliation Across 12 Acquiring Banks for a Payment Processor
A payment processor manually reconciled daily settlements across 12 acquiring banks — taking 8 hours every morning. We automated the reconciliation workflow — reducing it to 30 minutes with 95% straight-through processing.
About the Client
The Challenge
A payment processor manually reconciled daily settlements across 12 acquiring banks — taking 8 hours every morning. We automated the reconciliation workflow — reducing it to 30 minutes with 95% straight-through processing. The organization faced mounting pressure from leadership to modernize. Existing systems and processes had reached their limits — manual workarounds consumed staff time, data quality was unreliable, and decision-makers lacked the visibility they needed.
The payments industry added specific complexity: regulatory requirements (Industry-specific compliance, data privacy regulations, operational standards) demanded auditable processes and governance. Any technology change needed to maintain compliance continuity while delivering measurable improvement.
Previous attempts had stalled — either the technology was too complex for the internal team to maintain, the vendor didn't understand payments industry requirements, or the project scope expanded until timelines became unrealistic. This time, the sponsor demanded a phased approach with measurable results within one quarter.
Our Approach
We designed a phased approach optimized for speed-to-value and compliance continuity:
Process Discovery (Weeks 1-2)
Mapped manual processes. Identified automation candidates by volume, error rate, and ROI.
Bot Development (Weeks 2-5)
Built bots with UiPath and Power Automate with exception handling paths.
Testing (Weeks 4-6)
Production-volume testing. Exception handling validation. Parallel-run with manual process.
Deployment (Weeks 5-8)
Production deployment with monitoring dashboards. SLA metrics: processing time, error rate, exception rate.
Optimization (Weeks 7-10)
Performance analysis. Path optimization. Adjacent process identification for expansion.
Solution Architecture
Platform: UiPath + Power Automate hybrid automation
Architecture: Attended bots for exception handling + unattended for high-volume processing
Monitoring: Real-time dashboard for bot health, volumes, and exception queues
Results
Key Takeaways
If your organization is facing a similar challenge, here's what we learned:
Phased delivery de-risks large projects. By scoping the initial deployment for 8-12 week delivery, we proved value before the executive sponsor's next quarterly review. This maintained budget authority and organizational support for subsequent phases.
Payments domain expertise accelerates every phase. Understanding payments terminology, regulations, and workflows eliminated weeks of discovery that generalist consultants require. Our rpa team brought industry context from day one.
Change management is half the project. Technology implementations fail when users don't adopt. We embedded change management into every phase — from requirements workshops to training to post-go-live support. Adoption reached 80%+ within the first month.
Ongoing governance prevents regression. We established monthly review cadences, defined ownership for data quality and process adherence, and built dashboards that make issues visible before they become problems. The platform continues to deliver value because governance is sustained.
Technologies Used
Facing a Similar Challenge?
We deliver rpa solutions for payments organizations — typically within 8-12 weeks with measurable outcomes.