ADAPT - Adoption of Digital Automated Payment Technology

This Randomised Control Trial (RCT) of the ADAPT project is designed to test whether a 'Best Practice Visit' to a world class financial technology company is more effective at encouraging SMEs to adopt digital payment technologies than if they just received best practice information in the form of a 'digital guide'.

It will focus on encouraging the adoption of digital and automated payment technologies, which are proven to boost SME productivity by improving the efficiency of their payment practices. These digital payment technologies can include: digital banking; e-purchase order systems; e-invoicing; e-payments and card payment systems.

To test whether 'best practice visits' are more effective than a best practice guide, at encouraging SME adoption of these technologies, 200 SMEs from Cheshire, who have not used digital payment technologies before, will be recruited to participate in the Trial. 100 will be selected at random to attend a 'Best Practice Visit' to the Barclays Global Technology Campus, based at Knutsford, Cheshire. A further 100 will be randomly selected to receive a digital payment technology best practice 'guide' developed in conjunction with Barclays Bank.

The RCT is being led by Cheshire East Council, working closely with Barclays Bank and an independent evaluation partner, SQW. The concept of harnessing the expertise of larger corporates to exchange best practice knowledge of digital technology with local SMEs was tested through a Proof of Concept, delivered by Cheshire East Council, under Round 1 of the Business Basics Programme. In many ways, Cheshire East is the ideal location to test this approach. The successful economic performance of the Borough is due, in large part, to the presence of several very large, high GVA producing businesses. The GVA contribution of these larger businesses however masks the fact that 99.97% of our businesses are small to medium sized enterprises, with a much lower productivity performance.

If successful, this approach could be scaled up to be delivered in other regions of the UK, as a partnership between the private sector and other local authorities/ LEPs. The results from the Trial will be published in a final report and will be disseminated at a national and local level. This will mean that other banks could learn from the Trial to consider how they could also engage with their small business client base to offer solutions to encourage the take up of digital payment technology.