I’ve been managing the onboarding process for new clients of ShipMoney’s crew payroll programme for nearly five years.
The programme is designed to simplify how crew members get paid by their employers including ship managers, ship owners and crewing agents and that gives maritime companies greater control when disbursing their funds.
The aim of digitalising crew payments using a mobile wallet plus Visa card solution has been available for a number of years and has been widely adopted in the cruise sector. More recently ShipMoney has pioneered adoption in the commercial shipping industry through closely partnering with clients on the culture and logistical components of change management. The industry’s drive towards digitization and the recent adoption of new technology onboard commercial vessels has delivered some significant cost savings for ship operators due to efficiency gains in their ship operations. Automation onboard has also freed up seafarers from doing administrative and repetitive tasks allowing them to focus elsewhere.
The onset of digitalisation which has accelerated during the pandemic through remote working, video conferencing, online banking and cashless card payments in shops, has led to a more rapid uptake of digital and online payment solutions.
My team’s job is to ensure that the changes in a ship operator’s crew management and IT systems are seamless and that changes to how seafarers receive payroll are clearly communicated and importantly that the benefits of digitization are fully understood by both our direct clients (the ship operators) and our prepaid card users (the seafarers).
However, for many of our seafarers having an eWallet plus Visa card solution is a fairly new concept and we guide them through the range of functionalities with either a face-to face vessel visit by ShipMoney personnel at port or with online training sessions. ShipMoney deals with 97 different nationalities with our global team based across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The good thing about ShipMoney is that we’ve learned from years of experience in maritime and have adapted to the requirements of crew members globally a proprietary payments platform that can be tailored to integrate with systems across the industry.
My team works with our clients to maximize benefits for both crew members and finance & treasury teams. Through streamlining processes as well as giving crew members instant access to their wages without the significant transaction costs, costs and time can be reduced significantly.
We also support our clients after full deployment of a programme with ongoing customer reviews, regular touch base calls and by using regular online surveys. Feedback is super important to us as it enables us to continually innovate and improve. The shipping industry depends upon its people and operational efficiencies, hence our regular touch points across organizations is a critical part of what we do.
Our CRM is key to log all activity and contact with our clients ensuring regular and constructive dialogue and account development support. We also have an efficient customer success ticketing system that enables us to fix problems quickly or in real time. Data generated through our system is compiled and analysed to help us shape our programmes and anticipate issues before they happen. Our frequently asked questions (FAQs) are designed to ensure our customers use the most effective channels of comms with us which has been an effective method to streamline our global customer service delivery and response times.
Once onboarded, each of our corporate clients has a ShipMoney key account manager who is their primary contact for questions and queries. For crew we have our Vendor Manager Colby Rogers and his team who oversee customer services with our seafaring card users.
Crew can also manage their money online using the ShipMoney app to schedule payments to or send funds from their ShipMoney digital wallet to any other Visa debit or credit card in the world as ShipMoney is one of only a handful of companies that have a direct settlement with Visa.
Digital payments have been with us for some time now and shipping has just begun to rapidly adopt new technology in this space and changing payroll processes to capitalise on the benefits of a simpler, more efficient way to pay crew. Ending the outdated practices associated with cash delivery and security has improved cost effectiveness particularly with cash-to-master and allotments
The future is online and with the industry keen to attract new talent to the sector then the sooner that ship operators and crewing agents understand the tangible advantages of digital payments the better.
