[Sydney, AUSTRALIA] Nearly half of all Australians are ready to move from paper billing to Internet-enabled payment
methods, according to research commissioned by BPay.
The study, carried out by Mark Dignam and Associates, indicated that 48 percent of BPay
users and 40 percent of other electronic banking users would be interested in receiving and
paying their bills online.
“Previous studies indicated that the take-up of electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP)
in Australia would be slow initially and would take some time to reach critical mass,” said BPay
national business manager Linda Hemstrom.
The findings are fortuitous for BPay, as Hemstrom said that the company plans to roll out its
EBPP system in the first half of this year. Sun Microsystems will provide the technology behind
the service. “Clearly the market will be ready for start-to-finish bill presentment and payment,”
she said.
The new service will allow users to view, query and pay summary bills at their online banking
site, replacing paper bills and checks in the payment process. Customers can also study full
bill details via a secure link to their biller’s Web site.
Billers will be able to present summary bills at the consumer’s online banking site, and the user
can then choose to pay the bill directly to BPay or through their billing service provider. To set
up the service, users log on to their online banking site, decide what bills they want to receive
through BPay’s system and register the details of their selected billers.