- PayPal has 29.1 million active customers in Germany
- A milestone for the Aareal Exchange & Payment Platform (AEPP) on its way to becoming a comprehensive payment solution
- Pilot projects: first housing industry clients are already benefiting from AEPP's high efficiency
- Scalability potential by offering further services to tenants
Wiesbaden, 07 May 2021 – Aareal Bank Group is expanding the Aareal Exchange & Payment Platform solution (AEPP), which was launched in 2020, with an additional payment option: going forward, companies will be able to offer their customers payments via PayPal – including credit card payments – alongside the already integrated services offered by the provider. As a B2B platform solution and link between ERP systems and various payment providers, AEPP can be a key component for companies when it comes to efficient process management of payment transactions and additional services.
Lars Ernst, Managing Director at Aareal Bank AG, explains how significant the solution is for the strategic expansion of business models in a digital world: “The Aareal Exchange & Payment Platform is an important basis for companies entering the platform economy – where simple interactions are key to success. The AEPP enables companies from all sectors to digitalise and centrally integrate services and payment processes into their own ERP systems, thus realising material efficiency gains.”
Connecting popular payment providers such as PayPal for the invoicing of services on a platform solution is an important step towards satisfying changing customer expectations. “Today's end-customers expect secure digital payment transactions in just a few clicks”, emphasises Ernst. “In light of the increasing number of payment providers, it is thus becoming more and more important for companies from all sectors to have fully automated payment transactions, integrating them into the existing process landscape as efficiently as possible. This is where our platform solution comes into play.”
Christina Moritz, Director Sales, PayPal Germany, Austria and Switzerland, adds: “Customers want to have a range of simple and secure payment methods when it comes to paying their rent, too. Integrating PayPal into the Aareal Exchange & Payment Platform enables companies to connect with more than 375 million active PayPal customers worldwide and offer them the option of paying the way they want to.”
Successful roll-out in the housing industry
The platform offers housing and property industry companies the possibility to tap into new sources of income around their properties by intermediating services. The first housing industry clients are already making use of the Aareal Exchange & Payment Platform for rent payments and payment collection; Nassauische Heimstätte | Wohnstadt (NHW) group, one of the ten largest German housing companies and a provider of affordable housing, is one of these pilot clients. Following the successful pilot run with PayPal, in May NHW will be the first AEPP client to integrate the new payment option into its range of services. Tenants receive a payment request via e-mail and will be forwarded to a landing page via a link showing an overview of the entire payment information and available payment options. If the tenant chooses to pay with PayPal and clicks the PayPal button, he will be forwarded to Paypal and asked to log into his PayPal account, where he can choose from the payment options defined in his account – credit card, bank account or PayPal balance, receiving an e-mail confirmation following successful completion. In the next development level, NHW is currently planning to add certain innovative property-related services, which can then be paid via the AEPP.
“With this service for our tenants, we are up to date in a world where all areas of life are turning digital. Looking at predominant payment processes in the housing industry, we are pioneers”, says Eva Schneider, Head of Real Estate Services at NHW. “Implementation and roll-out of the Aareal Exchange & Payment Platform went smoothly, and we are proud that we, as a company with a 100-year history, are among the most modern German companies in the sector as regards client focus and process optimisation.”
