eBilling Overview: EBPP, EIPP, eStatements & eBilling Discussed

eBilling

The eBilling 'Push' Advantage
Historically, organizations with high-volume billing have used a portal based approach to Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP), where they 'deliver' their bills electronically by posting them on a website and sending an email notification to the customer.
eBilling Challenges
The Billing process has always been a strategic marketing and customer retention platform. However, without the means to measure effectiveness by customer profile or demographic usage, billers have historically focused more on getting paid and getting paid faster.
How Does eBilling Work
Striata's Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment solution delivers electronic bills via email, providing as much convenience as traditionally posted bills. Customers can also easily and simply make payments directly from within the eBill - something which cannot be matched in the paper billing world.
Push vs Pull
While customer adoption rates for 'pull' self-service portals have disappointed, 'push' email delivery of secure bills and statements has succeeded at driving qualified customer traffic to biller websites.

The traditional 'pull' process is easy to do and convenient for the biller, but cumbersome and inconvenient for the customer. With less than 10% adoption across all industries, this approach has not achieved the anticipated, nor required, customer adoption.

The strategic 'push' - inbox delivery of bills and statements - dramatically increases customer adoption of paperless documents and electronic payments:

eMail delivery overcomes customer inertia. Unlike an online bill pay portal where customers must proactively enroll, with Striata driven eBilling, customers just need to click once to opt-in or out. There is no website based 'registration' required.
Authentication relies on a shared secret of known information, and doesn't require customers to remember or use usernames and passwords.
Unlike web based bill pay which typically requires between 7 and 24 clicks, Email Bill Presentment and Payment can be as few as two clicks - one to view and one to pay.
While security fears such as phishing are hindering online payment, email billing bypasses consumer security fears. Unlike a website, encrypted email bills are unphishable.

Getting paid is still a primary goal for billers. When evaluating electronic billing options, the first question is always: will it lower my billing costs and by how much?

However, the more important question to ask about electronic billing is actually: what kind of adoption rates can I expect?

If the primary goal of electronic billing is to reduce billing costs, its effectiveness is best measured by the number of customers who opt to STOP receiving paper communications. An eBilling initiative is therefore only as successful as the number of paper bills or statements that you eliminate: the amount you save is directly proportional to the number of customers that convert to electronic billing and give up paper. Each paper bill that is suppressed reduces the total billing cost.

It would seem obvious that if a customer is viewing and paying a bill electronically, that the paper bill is automatically suppressed, but in fact, a large percentage of online bill pay customers still receive paper statements.

The email eBilling process:

The electronic bill is delivered to the customer via email; still the most frequently used digital communication channel, and the one with the highest comfort level in terms of use.
It allows customers to consolidate and store all documents from each biller in their mail client or in another folder on the computer, while retaining all security mechanisms.
The bill remains encrypted while not in use, so the customer's personal data is protected even if their computer is lost or stolen.
Striata eBills are replicas of the paper bills, but are also embedded with rich functionality that allows sorting and drill-down, as well as the option to pay from within the bill itself.

For billers tasked with online bill pay targets, the vision was never a mere reduction in billings costs, but rather, the ability of a billing platform in an online environment to drive customers to their web based services, while reducing paper output and the associated billing expenses.

Unfortunately this web based bill presentment and payment strategy has not resulted in the anticipated reduced 'cost to serve' through electronic payment and paper suppression, or fulfilled strategic web portal targets:

The theory was that consumers would flock to 'pull' biller web sites to manage accounts, view statements, pay bills and turn off paper. Most importantly from a marketing perspective, customers would also click on offers and promotions and purchase more products and services while at the biller's website.
The reality is that only a small percentage of customers have opted to pay online. This has not translated automatically into significant savings, as even fewer have consented to turning off paper. In practice, these online bill pay portals have become just another electronic payment channel option and have not succeeded in driving paper turn off, reducing billing costs, or capitalizing on customer retention and up-sell. However, with "push" email bill delivery, these opportunities are within every biller's grasp.

Reduce Billing Costs
Many businesses are looking for ways to cut their operating costs, while others are looking for cost effective ways to reduce their carbon footprint. The high cost of paper on both fronts has made it an obvious target.
Maximize Customer Adoption
80% internet penetration but less than 10% adoption to online bill pay. The solution to high adoption of eBilling is to 'push' your bills to the customer as a securely encrypted email attachment. 'Push' eBilling can double your adoption in 6 months.
Get Payments Faster
Optimizing electronic billing processes can dramatically reduce DSO by cutting the time it takes to get bills to customers and to elicit payment. Documented results show that it can reduce the DSO cycle by as much as 70%.
Paper Turn Off
Customers want to turn off paper. Billers want to turn off paper. Conservation groups, Governments and the environment want us to turn off paper. How can you make this happen?
Marketing Opportunities
One of the key advantages of Striata's email electronic bill delivery solution is the personalized marketing opportunity that it provides.
Anti-Phishing Protection
Combat phishing by sending the entire statement to the customer. No links back to a website, no login, no phishing.
Going Green
Businesses are under increased pressure to reduce their carbon footprint. Any initiative that has a demonstrable reduction in paper usage will contribute to carbon reduction. eBilling can reduce paper consumption significantly every month.

Striata's Email Bill Presentment & Payment solution can help billers achieve significant reductions in costs associated with paper, printing and posting of bills and statements. By removing paper, mailing and manual processing, operating costs can be reduced by between 65-85%, with minimal capital outlay.

The cost saving potential of replacing paper bills and statements with electronic documents is undisputed. The primary challenge today in realizing these cost reductions, is not in the logistics of replacing paper with online, digital and electronic formats, but in building customer adoption of paper turn off strategies.

Research has shown that customers are more likely to turn off paper bills if they receive an electronic equivalent directly into their email inbox. (Cathy Graeber, Forrester, 2005). According to January 2008 research, over 43% of consumers would prefer to receive their eBill as a secure attachment, while only 14% would choose to visit their biller's website to view and pay their bill. Read more...

It's rare to find a bank or biller today that doesn't allow you to manage your account and pay your bills online. However, biller websites have not yet fully realized the cost benefits of their online bill payment portals because these sites are not successfully driving customer adoption.

Consumers are shopping, dating, playing games, listening to music and watching movies online, but the vast majority are not paying their bills online and worse - they have not turned off the paper. Despite almost universal internet penetration in North America and many other Western countries, customers are still trickling to online bill pay in small numbers.

93% of all internet users have done some commerce related activity on the internet, and 66% have made at least one purchase online. Yet only 4 out of 10 consumers have tried online banking, and only 30% have paid a bill online.

Surveys confirm that consumer resistance to online bill pay is not a matter of consumer comfort with online interaction, or even concern over phishing, just a natural resistance to running after their bills.

Offline, billers do not expect customers to line up at their place of business to find out what they owe. Online, however, that is exactly what billers expect: instead of delivering bills to customers, they require customers to retrieve their bills, and go through a rather laborious process to pay. Read more...

Optimizing electronic billing processes can dramatically reduce DSO bycutting the time it takes to get bills to customers and elicit payment.

Documented results show that email bill presentment and payment is able to reduce the DSO cycle by as much as 70%.

"The easier it is, the faster I'll pay"
This is the consumer mantra when it comes to paying bills. It's an attitude that won't surprise any savvy biller who understands that customer convenience is paramount. It's nonetheless gratifying for eBilling companies to have this confirmed with the following hard evidence:

Results from two recent Striata North American utility eBilling projects prove beyond doubt how attractive the proposition of eBilling is:

The results from two recent Striata North American utility eBilling projects prove beyond doubt how attractive the proposition of eBilling is:

Over 50% of customers paid the bill before the paper bill could even have arrived by mail.
19% paid on the same day they received the bill.

The cash flow implications are considerable and improvement in customer retention is also evident, due to the superior convenience that electronic payment offers. These findings add further weight to the case for eBilling, already very strong due to the considerable savings a biller enjoys in reduced costs (it is 70% - 90% cheaper to deliver bills electronically than by paper). Read more...

Paper to Paperless: The internet provides the perfect alternative delivery channel for paper documents. However, embracing electronic document delivery will not necessarily enable an organisation to turn off paper.

Website "pull" models require customers to proactively choose to turn off paper. This results in a fraction of customers actually selecting this option.

Striata provides a cost effective alternative delivery channel that can be used to augment and complement existing online services for paper turn off. The Striata solution replaces paper bills and statements with rich interactive electronic versions, delivered directly to customer inboxes.

The key is not just in replacing paper documents with electronic ones but in "pushing" them to your customers. Read more...

With paper bill stuffers becoming increasingly ineffective and cost prohibitive, and the marketing opportunity at customer portals often lost altogether, an eBill offers prime marketing 'real-estate' that is many times more effective than a paper bill stuffer.

Many email billers maximize the electronic billing process with targeted offers that drive well qualified customer website traffic. With the Striata Platform, these offers can be individually personalized and profile targeted, promising relevant, highly visible marketing messages.

Transactional promotions or "transpromo" marketing is a highly effective way of cross-selling and up-selling existing customers. Including transpromo messages in an interactive bill is even more likely to increase response rates, as the recipient can interact with the offer immediately within the same medium. Read more...

Financial institutions and other billers that rely on email notifications to drive consumers to their websites will continue to be targets for phishing and other fraudulent activities. Secure eBilling completely eliminates this threat whilst offering simple and convenient bill presentment and payment.

The single, most phishable process is to teach customers to expect an email once a month saying "Your statement is now ready - click here to view it", which takes the recipient to a login page.

One of the fundamentals of 'push' email billing and statements is that the recipient is not required to visit or login to any website. The entire contents of the bill or statement are delivered in the email package. This in itself is the major strategic reason why such a 'delivery' mechanism is not susceptible to phishing.

There are however many additional and compelling reasons why a secure (encrypted) email bill / statement is unphishable. Read more...

In recent years, the "goodwill" factor of going green has gone from "nice-to-have" to being an indicator of respectability. Businesses are under pressure from all sides to show progress in their environmental policies. A recent national survey concluded that going green was no longer just the right thing to do, but is also seen as being very positive for a company's bottom line.

One of the easiest ways to build customer confidence in how you run your business, is by being proactive regarding your company's impact on the environment. Email billing can help businesses reduce their paper output and reduce their billing costs, while complying with green regulations.

Many billers and financial institutions have, in fact, invested in electronic billing without succeeding in turning off paper billing. Many customers who pay electronically or via automatic debit still receive paper bills and statements. Surprisingly, this includes a large percentage of online bill pay customers. Read more...

Striata BillPay
Striata BillPay offers an innovative 'one-click', no registration electronic bill payment, directly from within the encrypted, emailed bill itself, revolutionizing the way bills, statements and collection notices are paid.
Transpromo Marketing
Striata's innovative electronic messaging solutions create new marketing opportunities, enabling companies to reach customers who use online payment portals and self service kiosks to pay their bills.
B2B EIPP and e-Invoicing
Striata's Electronic Invoice Presentment & Payment (EIPP) connectors deliver your eInvoices to the major eInvoicing hubs around the world, whilst delivering a secure electronic bill to the rest of your customers. Striata's innovative electronic messaging solutions are able to provide flexible output formats that meet the different eInvoicing standards.
Notifications and Alerts
Striata electronic notifications and alerts are automated, high volume electronic messaging solutions, uniquely designed to drive customer action and response.
Credit and Collections
Striata's Electronic Credit & Collections offering provides an efficient, cost effective alternative to traditional collection processes that dramatically reduces the time and expense involved in collecting delinquent payments.
eStatements
eStatements help billers and financial services organizations realize their paper turn off objectives by replacing statements with rich, interactive electronic documents that are delivered directly to customer inboxes.
eSignature
Striata CIC eSignature is a unique solution that enables the newly insured to not only receive their policy electronically, but also to approve it with just one click. Insurers are able to get policies activated instantly ensuring minimal customer acquisition fallout. The activation cycle is reduced from an average of 14 days to less than 48 hours.
One-Click Payment
Striata has revolutionized the payment process by adding Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail to its Secure eDocument Delivery Solution, significantly enhancing the consumer billing experience.
Striata ePIN
The Striata ePIN solution uses this same technology and functionality to provide financial institutions and other card issuers with a secure, stand-alone PIN distribution system that safeguards the PIN from generation to distribution.

Striata BillPay is a solution to help billers gain maximum electronic payment customer adoption, by taking their ePayment strategies to the consumer.

Striata's innovative 'one-click', no registration electronic payment capability is built into the eBill, allowing customers to make a bill payment directly from within the encrypted, emailed bill itself.

Primary business drivers:

Instant bill delivery;
An enhanced customer experience;
Faster, electronic payment;
Higher ePayment adoption;
Personalized, targeted marketing.

These bill payment websites have become an expected fixture in transactional environments such as banking, mortgage, cable and telecommunications industries, and play a vital role in their overall strategy to reduce costs - especially those expenses associated with paper statements and billing.

While a successful online payment portal can help facilitate paper turn off and reduce the associated billing costs, it can also mean losing out on a one-to-one promotional marketing opportunity.

Traditionally, customers receive bill inserts or "stuffers", incorporating promotional content, in the same envelope as their transactional paper bills and statements. In most cases, this transpromo marketing opportunity is lost when a customer opts to view and pay their bill online.

For the services industries, where a significant amount of revenue is generated from customer retention programs, this can add up to a sizeable loss. This is where Striata adds significant value. Innovative transpromo messaging solutions replace this lost marketing opportunity. These are considerably cheaper and more effective than traditional paper bill stuffers. Read more...

As eInvoicing gathers momentum, billers are faced with an increasing number of requests to provide their bills to each customer's preferred eInvoicing portal. Striata's flexible output formats are able to provide each portal's required format (EDI, XML, SOAP) without the need to "belong" or install portal software.

In addition Striata's EIPP is a highly effective solution for delivering large volumes of bills in a consolidated, encrypted attachment. This is primarily used for delivering multiple bills to commercial customers (B2B). Business rules for consolidating multiple bills to the same recipient into a single email are used to achieve additional cost savings.

Secure electronic delivery of multi-invoices is aligned closely to companies current billing processes, as it requires the least (if any) change of process for the majority of customers, whilst providing the relevant new formats required for eInvoicing customers.

Striata's EIPP and e-invoicing includes a Dispute Management system that can further facilitate cost savings for B2B billing. The entire electronic document based dispute management process occurs without any human intervention and without the need for complicated data transfer protocols. This solution is ideal for large business customers, and in fact all customers with more than 5 or 6 invoices per month. Read more...

Delivered as electronic messages across multiple media channels, Striata driven notices are integrated with response functionality that enables interactivity (such as making an electronic payment) from within the notice itself. Customers have the ability to respond instantly without having to visit a website or perform a series of actions.

This encourages faster - sometimes immediate - customer action.

Costing 99% less than an outbound call, Striata's cost effective, response driven electronic messaging solution is ideal for businesses that are looking to harness the power of two-way interactive electronic communication.

Unlike many solutions that only have the ability to distribute messages over a single media, Striata's solution distributes electronic notices and alerts directly to customer email inboxes, phones, mobile devices, and by fax. This cross channel delivery ensures the highest possible penetration, the widest possible reach, driving the fastest response. Read more...

Striata's innovative electronic credit and collections solution is designed to help billers reduce the significant costs associated with delinquent and past due accounts.

Delivered via email directly to customer inboxes, these electronic notices not only reach customers instantly but actively encourage faster payment. With just a single click from within the collection notice, customers can pay their bills without the need to visit a single web page.

By replacing costly paper reminders with efficient electronic payment notices, billers can make use of automated payment reminders as a viable way to prevent delinquent payments and their associated expenses.

The uniqueness of Striata's solution is in the strategic presentment of collection and reminder notices, delivered as secure electronic documents directly into the customer's inbox. Striata incorporates an instant, one-click payment facility from within the collection notice itself, providing a powerful, immediate payment opportunity. Read more...

Email eStatement Presentment provides significant, instant & measurable cost reduction from reduced paper output:

Significant savings - Significant reduction in paper printing and postage costs.
Fast, one click access to the eStatement from the customer inbox, without visiting a website or logging in.
Ability to save and view the eStatement offline or outside the email client, with all the security features intact.
Mobile ready - Striata eStatements are viewable on Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.
Environmental benefits - eStatements drive paper turn off, helping companies reduce their 'carbon footprint'.
Effective use of customer touch points - eStatements provide effective, powerful real estate for personalized marketing offers.
Low take-up costs - Rapid implementation, available as a SaaS, no software or infrastructure purchase and no risk, pay per use pricing.
Support for corporate e-communication strategies - links within the eStatement effectively drive qualified customer traffic to the online portal.

The combination of Striata Secure Electronic Document Delivery and CIC eSignature maximizes both client and customer benefits considerably, offering enhanced customer service, 80% cost savings on policy delivery, automated filing and reduced contact center activity.

The entire delivery, signature, filing and archiving process is fully automated. This joint product offering represents an ideal solution for virtually any financial application requiring electronic delivery and approvals.

Striata eSignature satisfies industry compliance and the ESIGN Act.

As with Striata BillPay, CertifiedEmail recipients receive their bill as a secure PDF attachment.

This partnership creates a unique ability to initiate secure electronic payment directly from within the body of the email communication - recipients are therefore not compelled to open the attachment, unless they want to view more detailed billing information.

CertifiedEmail is supported by the largest email providers and is currently available at AOL, BT, Cox Communications, TELUS and Yahoo!.AT&T, Comcast, RoadRunner and Verizon are in the process of rollingout CertifiedEmail in 2009.

Security is at the core of all PIN based transactions. While cardholders must be cognizant of keeping their PIN a secret, the matter of PIN privacy originates with the card issuer.

The ability to securely deliver PINs to cardholders while reducing the cost of delivery is a priority for every card issuer and financial service provider. Sending PINs through traditional mail is costly, time consuming, and more importantly, highly insecure. Striata ePIN provides real business benefits, including improved customer service, cost savings, and peace of mind to both the cardholder and the card issuer.

Striata ePIN meets the global PIN distribution requirements issued by VISA, by ensuring the security and privacy of the PIN throughout the delivery process. This is achieved for both the request and delivery of the PIN, via multiple channels and varying security levels.

The card holder may request the PIN using SMS, email, IVR and the Web. Delivery of the PIN is dependent on the customer profile and the security level required. The highest level of secure delivery is obtained by sending an encrypted PIN directly to the card holder’s email address, together with a one-time password (OTP) required to access the encrypted PIN, sent to the card holder’s mobile handset.

Three-factor authentication is the key to security. The person requests the PIN using their issued authentication value (something you know), receives the email (something you own i.e. access to you email box), and then enters the OTP received on their mobile phone (something you receive) to access the PIN. Multi-factor authentication in PIN delivery provides the basis for non-repudiation of financial transactions, which is an essential characteristic of card-based commerce.

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Safeguarding the customer’s PIN, from generation to distribution
Striata ePIN provides card issuers with a secure, stand-alone PIN distribution system, ensuring that only the customer has access to their PIN.