Coming
To An Inbox Near You: Your eBills!
eMail-Based Billing: The Next
Generation Of Electronic Bill Presentment And Payment
PALO ALTO, CA -- (INTERNET WIRE)
-- It’s well known that more companies are turning to
electronic means for delivering bills and providing customers
with payment mechanisms. Electronic bill payment and presentment
(EBPP) enables billers to gain a competitive advantage, generate
eCommerce, reduces costs (for paper, postage, handling) and
trims the length of time it takes to be paid. The big news,
though, is that a new electronic delivery approach is likely to
become more commonplace during the next three to five years:
eMail – according to “Delivery of Essential eCommerce
Documents to the Desktop: The Next Generation of eDelivery
Solutions” a recently published study by Killen &
Associates, a leading Internet market research firm. The study
analyzed the current use of Web-based bill delivery and payment
(which means that bills are presented or consolidated at
websites) with the newer method of sending bills in HTML format
eMail directly to recipients' inboxes.
In 1998, billers favored the Web
to present bills, accounting for 61% of bills delivered
electronically. The same year, only 18% were delivered via eMail.
By 2005, the Killen report predicts that the electronic billing
and statement delivery landscape will be very different – with
Web-based and eMail-based bill / statement delivery about even
at (40% and 38%, respectively).
Why the shift? “eMail-based
billing is a double win,” says Michael Killen, chairman and
founder of Killen & Associates. “It’s a win for the
consumer and a win for the enterprise or service issuing the
bill. eMail billing systems are easy for the consumer to use.
And, the arrival of an eMail bill is likely to evoke a more
meaningful response and sense of urgency than a message to visit
a website. From the issuer’s perspective, eMail bill delivery
is less costly to implement and execute than Web presentment.
The system or service generating the eMail bill need only meet
the biller’s schedule. With the eMail approach, the biller can
stagger the release of bills. This is an important advantage
because with Web bill presentment, you need to provide a service
that responds to peak customer demands. And it costs the biller
to scale up whenever someone wants to view their bills,” adds
Killen.
eMail billing also provides an
important strategic advantage for billers. As Don Pare, CEO of
MessagingDirect (a company that expects to grow as billers
implement secure eMail bill delivery systems) explains, “eMail
bill delivery eliminates all the problems of dealing with
middlemen – consolidators. It gives the billers a direct
connection to what matters most: the customer.”
The stakes for effective bill
delivery are going to be greater than ever, the Killen study
concludes. The EBPP marketplace itself is poised for massive
growth – from a $1.5 billion to a $34 billion market –
during the same period. Companies like MessagingDirect, a
pioneer in eMail-based delivery, stand to reap enormous profits
by seizing the new trend while it’s still early in the game.
Among other recommendations, the
study points out that vendors wishing to succeed in the eMail-based
bill delivery market should make sure that reliability and
security are carefully considered and built into the system.
“eMail-based systems need high levels of reliability,”
Killen says. “People must feel confident that their bills will
arrive on schedule – their creditworthiness depends on it.
Ditto for confidence in the security of the system. Consumers
won’t adopt unless they are convinced that their bills are
safe from prying eyes.”
The good news is that eMail-based
bill and statement delivery can be made reliable and secure in a
cost-effective way. It may well be that as eMail-based systems
become the delivery method of choice, individuals may well log
on and learn, “You’ve got bills!”
Killen & Associates, Inc.,
headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is the leading market
research firm helping enterprises seize business opportunities
created by the advance of essential eCommerce applications –
electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP), electronic
statement presentment (ESP), and electronic invoicing and
payments (EIP). It provides its clients with the “EBPP/ESP/EIP
Global Research and Strategic Communications Service.” Killen
& Associates maintains European offices in Richmond, Surrey,
UK, and Zurich, Switzerland. The firm’s website address is: www.killen.com
Killen & Associates /
Access Conferences International produces the conference series,
ESP World 2000 to be held in San Francisco, London, and
Singapore, Autumn 2000. Website: www.killen.com/events
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