Money orders are used widely in the US, but they carry a significant compliance, reconciliation, and risk burden for retailers, front-line associates, and store managers. A major convenience retailer in the US approached Cullinan to transform the traditional model.
Money orders are used widely in the US, but they carry a significant compliance, reconciliation, and risk burden for retailers, front-line associates, and store managers. A major convenience retailer in the US approached Cullinan to transform the traditional model.
Money orders are error-prone. When a customer asks a store operator to buy one, the conversation occurs verbally. It’s easy for the wrong values to be printed on a money order or entered into the POS terminal - either accidentally or fraudulently. In some cases, the entire process can take 10 - 15 minutes while a queue of customers is building up at the counter.
Money orders also bring very serious AML and CTF compliance obligations which have become increasingly demanding. They require retailers to know about suspicious behaviour across their entire network of stores, but many don’t have a system to meet that need. There is no longer any room for human error.
As a result, the convenience retailer had a team at its head office dedicated to the compliance, settlement, and reconciliation of money orders and wanted to make the entire process more efficient.
The retailer deployed Cullinan at over 250 stores to complete money orders more accurately via their existing POS systems, reduce double handling, and automate compliance and reconciliation. Using Cullinan, they could integrate with Moneygram, set defined limits for money orders, and streamline the process so that store operators only enter the amount one time at the point of sale. Cullinan automatically instructs the money order printer to print the correct amount. Now there are no settlement and reconciliation issues at the end of the day because the point of sale record always matches the money order printer record.
When a money order or group of money orders is over a regulatory or retailer-defined limit, the point of sale will prompt the operator to ask the customer to register. This can be done via their mobile device and they can easily provide their personal identification and details of all their money orders away from the counter. The customer then returns with a barcode and the money orders are completed by the operator in less than a minute while Cullinan’s automated compliance system prints and personalizes all the money orders and runs risk and compliance checks on all transactions. The money order products are also included in the basket as normal product SKUs.
A process that used to take up to ten minutes at the counter now takes much less than a minute with minimal error. The retailer is also able to meet their compliance requirements with precision, eliminating the need to invest in an entire department of people who were solely dedicated to compliance and settlement. Suspicious activity reports are now largely automated and auditable compliance logs are created for the regulators.
With no end-of-day reconciliation to do between the money order printer and POS, store managers get to finish up their days on time too.
“We needed a better way to offer money orders. The regulatory and compliance burden was becoming too big, but Cullinan streamlined the entire process while making it more accurate and reliable. Their solution was easy to implement and helped us to win our time back.”
