The eBilling 'Push' Advantage
Historically, organizations with high-volume billing have used a portal based approach to Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP). where billers 'deliver' their bills electronically by posting them on a website and sending an email notification to the customer.
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.

With over a decade of experience in the electronic billing space, Striata is often asked to define the key differences between delivering secure billing documents via email, and Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment websites:
  • Pull eBilling (the traditional website model) - Bills are posted on a secure website, that requires users to a) proactively enroll and b) proceed through multiple steps to log-in, in order to view their bills and make payments.
  • Push eBilling (the Striata advantage) - Encrypted bills are delivered directly into customer inboxes via email. Once the eBill is decrypted, customers can make an instant, secure payment without having to visit a website, (1 click to open, 1 click to pay).

The two offerings provide both overlapping and unique benefits, sometimes to different customer segments. The optimal approach offers customers the choice to either receive and pay their bills from within their inbox or access them online.  Push eBilling is quicker to implement and achieves exponentially higher adoption, due to the customer convenience factors (not having to enroll or fetch their bill.)

Overcoming low or static customer adoption

Although organizations with high-volume billing are anxious to achieve the significant cost savings promised by eBilling, the vast majority have been unsuccessful. The portal-based eBilling approach that relies on customers proactively visiting the biller's website to enroll and retrieve their bills, has not achieved high customer adoption.

Historically, the emphasis has been on bill presentment websites. In the EBPP space, billers "deliver" their bills electronically by posting them on a website and sending an email notification to the customer. This is easy and convenient for the biller, but cumbersome and irritating for the customer.

With the changing profile of online users, it is apparent that even those organizations with large bill presentment infrastructures, need to complement this process with an email delivery offering. It would be more convenient for  the biller to send and the customer to receive the bill as a securely encrypted email attachment, thereby eradicating the need to collect it from a website. This has the added advantage of making the roll-out of eBilling very simple - one of the current drawbacks of existing EBPP solutions.
Factors which inhibit online billing penetration:
  • 25% of Americans are still using dial-up for internet access, at a speed of 56bps or less. (This figure is much higher in rural areas.) To register and use a secure EBPP website at modem speed is just not feasible.
  • Marketers are having difficulty effectively communicating the benefits to the consumer.
  • Email continues to be the communication medium of choice, yet most billers only offer internet website presentment.
  • Enticing the customer to go online and register is expensive and generally yields poor results. Expecting your customers to proactively collect their bills, when traditionally, they are used to having them delivered, you can be rest assured that the majority of them will be reluctant to do so.
  • Customers regularly forget their usernames and passwords, resulting in expensive phone calls to the customer service center.
  • The drill down to search for and download a typical online bill takes between 7 and 24 clicks, requiring customers to work very hard to benefit from  this 'convenience'.
  • Security fears, such as phishing, are still hindering online payment.
Striata's eBilling solution, in comparison:
  • Doesn't require permanent, high speed internet access. Customers download their bills along with the rest of their emails.
  • The benefits to the consumer are more obvious, as their bills continue to be delivered to them as before - but as electronic documents instead of paper.
  • High comfort level by consumers of all ages in accessing and opening email.
  • Overcomes customer inertia. Unlike an online bill pay portal where customers must proactively follow a lengthy process to enroll, with Striata driven eBilling, customers just click an enroll button to join.
  • Authentication relies on a shared secret of known information, and doesn't require customers to remember or use usernames and passwords.
  • Secure EBPP can be experienced in as few as two clicks - one to view and one to pay.
  • Bypasses consumer security fears. Unlike a website, encrypted eBills are unphishable.

What statistics tell us about the EBPP space

Over 70% of Americans are using email regularly, yet less than 30% of US adults have tried viewing and paying bills online. In fact, in almost all industries and market verticals, adoption of online EBPP varies from less than 2% to only 15% of customers.

Customer adoption has remained low because traditional eBilling solutions require consumers to go to a website to view and pay their bills. Consumers have inherently resisted a new process that requires them to fetch their bills; as they expect billers to deliver them.

The current situation is that utilities in the US have only managed to achieve 3-8% paper turn-off (not to be confused with enrollment) after 2-3 years, according to Chartwell.

The current situation:
  • 75% of US adults from all demographics have internet access - Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 - Dec 2007).
  • 90% of email users send and receive email every day, and 44% are on email constantly - DoubleClick's 6th Annual consumer Study (2005)
  • 91% of US Internet users have gone online and sent or read email, and 56% do this routinely - Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 - Dec 2007).
  • 1.2 billion email users in 2007, expected this to rise to 1.6 billion by 2011. The Radicati Group October 2007
  • 92.4% percent of households pay at least one bill by mail. - US Postal Service Household Diary Survey 2007
  • 76% of consumers would prefer to receive bills via email than having to visit a website - Bank Technology News Research (04/2002)

Striata clients achieve dramatically higher adoption rates:
  • North American utility, Whitby Hydro achieved 8% paper turn-off in the first 12 months;
  • Georgia based Plant Telecommunications achieved over 15% adoption in the first 7 months and saves an average of $2 per eBill.
  • MultiChoice (a global satellite TV company) has converted 250,000 customers, which is about 40% of its internet active customer base in 4 years.
  • Time Warner Cable has over 40% of all customer email addresses, but turned to Striata because its web-based solution achieved less than 5% adoption over the past 3 years.
  • Denver Water is in the final stages of implementing its PUSH eBilling solution following disappointing results with its online solution.