Commercial Insights

Reimbursements made simpler through innovation

Key takeaways

ReimbursePro replaces paper checks with digital payments, reducing delays, manual work, and operational risk.

Recipients choose how they’re paid, including ACH, digital wallets, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, or checks.

Faster digital delivery lowers escheatment risk by reducing unclaimed and lost payments.

Built-in integration and tracking simplify reconciliation and cut administrative costs.

Works across industries such as healthcare, real estate, and education, supporting a wide range of reimbursement use cases.

Even as businesses continue to turn to sophisticated financial management software, customer payments, reimbursements, and refunds remain a pain point—particularly for treasury and accounting teams managing high volumes or operating across multiple states.

Manually cutting checks, dealing with mailing delays, reconciling payments, and managing the ongoing challenge of unclaimed funds can drain valuable time and resources, regardless of industry. Lost or expired checks often require reissuing payments and restarting the process, while paper checks themselves can also introduce operational and fraud risk.

“No matter the sector, companies frequently run into similar challenges with reimbursement processing: disjointed workflows, reliance on paper, reconciliation lags, and escheatment risk,” said Regions Corporate & Institutional Banking Treasury Management Executive Liz Fedor Hancock. “Technology offers a clear path to streamline these processes and accelerate refunds, and Regions ReimbursePro is a strong example of that progress.”

For businesses operating in today’s regulatory environment—especially those subject to varying state escheatment rules—modernizing reimbursement workflows is no longer optional. It’s a competitive necessity.

How does it work?

The concept behind Regions ReimbursePro is straightforward and designed with both payers and recipients in mind.

When a business initiates payment or reimbursement, recipients can choose how they receive those funds, including:

• In-app digital wallet
• ACH payment to a designated bank account
• Digital payment platforms such as PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle
• A traditional physical check

If a recipient selects a digital payment option, funds are delivered immediately. This enables faster account reconciliation, fewer unclaimed refunds, reduced escheatment exposure, and significant mitigation of check-related risks such as errors, delays, or reissues.

Flexible across industries and use cases

The convenience of Regions ReimbursePro applies across a wide range of industries and use cases. Real estate property managers, for example, regularly need to process security deposit refunds. In academia, research stipends, scholarship awards and tuition require adjustments when students change course loads. Similarly, businesses may need to award loyalty program payouts or manage the disbursement of settlement funds. In the complex world of healthcare, providers often must return overpayments to patients or correct billing errors.

Regardless of the nature of the refund or the business involved, Regions ReimbursePro technology can offer a streamlined, efficient process.

Reducing administrative burden

One of the most significant advantages of a solution like Regions ReimbursePro is its ability to reduce—or eliminate—manual administrative work.

Regions ReimbursePro eliminates the manual steps involved in printing checks and mailing payments with digital workflows that initiate payments quickly, track progress in real time and integrate the activity with existing financial software platforms. Recipients benefit as well, receiving funds faster without waiting for mail delivery or traveling to a branch.

The result is win-win for payers and payees alike, according to Julie Bates, Regions Treasury Management product manager. “Businesses want tools that remove friction from everyday tasks, allowing their teams to focus on the work that moves their business forward. Regions ReimbursePro is designed for ease of use, integrates cleanly with existing treasury systems and substantially cuts the time and cost associated with a traditional reimbursement process.”

This solution can provide other benefits for the business, too, by helping them strengthen relationships with customers, patients and other payees. Fast, reliable payments can help to reinforce trust — whether a tenant is receiving a security-deposit refund or a patient is getting reimbursement for a corrected medical bill.

“When a business can deliver funds quickly and predictably, it improves the entire customer experience. Regions ReimbursePro allows them to do that while also enhancing internal controls and simplifying reconciliation,” said Bates.

Lowering escheatment risk

Escheatment — the requirement to turn over unclaimed funds to the state after a defined period — represents yet another major operational challenge for traditional reimbursement. Managing this process has proved time-consuming, with failure to meet state requirements often resulting in penalties.

Using the technology that Regions ReimbursePro helps mitigate these risks by accelerating payment delivery, enabling visibility into fund acceptance, monitoring outstanding payments, resending payment links, and maintaining cleaner records. In turn, this can significantly reduce the number of payments that become subject to escheatment.

The value of modernized payment processes

For Hancock, Regions ReimbursePro technology stands to offer businesses that process reimbursements a number of measurable benefits, including mitigating risk, improving back-office productivity and providing a stronger value proposition for customers.

“Regions ReimbursePro is one example of how Regions is committed to providing innovative treasury solutions that help businesses operate more securely and efficiently,” Hancock said. “It’s all about ease of use throughout the process, which provides tremendous value for all parties involved.”

Ready to help

Regions can help with Treasury Management solutions to improve cash flow, streamline payables, manage liquidity, and mitigate unnecessary risk exposure.