The US market is the hottest market for electronic bill payment, according to Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment: Creating Opportunity from Necessity a report by industry analyst Ovum. The undeveloped state of US payment infrastructure, compared to the European familiarity with debit and giro systems, makes it the prime global market, says Ovum, which predicts that US e-bill payments will rise from 600 million this year to 29.3 billion by 2005, by when European e-bill payments will only have reached 7.4 billion.
Ovum expects the pricing for the electronic presenting of bills will mirror that of online banking, with US customers charged for the services and UK or Australian consumers paying nothing. Consumers will be able to see their bills using internet access points, especially in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong where these are increasingly prevalent.
E-billing growth is being driven by the technology’s promise of reduced back-end costs, coupled with its ability to offer suppliers another access point to the customer, and therefore another marketing possibility. Traditional paper-based billing firms, such as bill printers or distributors, will be threatened by the e-billing technology, although the new channel will mean a market for service providers as well as payment processing houses.
