Doxo Inc. has announced the first biller to accept payments through doxoPAY, the bill-management website it launched this month.
The Seattle vendor's doxoPAY service allows consumers to pay and manage their bills from multiple providers in one location. It went live Feb. 1 and Doxo announced its first payment-accepting provider, Puget Sound Energy of Bellevue, Wash., on Wednesday. The utility's customers now may receive, pay and file their energy bills through their doxoPAY account.
Companies such as Sprint and KCP&L, an energy provider based in Kansas City, Mo., are connected to the doxoPAY platform but are unable to accept payment.
Doxo also said Wednesday that it secured $10 million in financing from Sigma Partners in Boston; Mohr Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif.; and Bezos Expeditions, the investment fund of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos.
Doxo plans to use the funds to support product development, expand sales and marketing and hire employees. It also said the funding will help attract providers to connect to the site.
When connecting with a biller through doxoPAY, consumers grant permission for that business to turn off paper mail and deliver documents securely and privately to their Doxo account, said Steve Shivers, Doxo's chief executive officer.
Users may check which bills are due by clicking on the "to-do list" within their account, Shivers said. The list shows users which bills are ready to pay and enables them to view the entire bill, he said.
Account holders may pay bills by linking their doxoPAY account with a bank account, which Doxo then uses to pay the biller, Shivers said.
Consumers benefit from this type of site because all bills and information are organized in one account, and businesses also may benefit, Shivers said.
"We provide businesses with a much lower payment processing cost than credit cards or other forms of consumer payment," he said.
Businesses pay Doxo a fee when they send a bill through doxoPAY, Shivers said. He would not disclose the amount of the fee.
Doxo essentially is trying to address the pitfalls of other electronic bill-pay options such as through a bank account or through the biller directly, said Gwenn Bezard, co-founder and research director at Aite Group LLC in Boston.
"Those models have not evolved much in the last few years," he said.
Moreover, billers need to become more paperless, because in many cases much of the paper they send to consumers is not necessarily bills but can also include statements, explanations of benefits and privacy disclosures, Bezard said. And because no good service for centralizing the flow of paper exists, Doxo has positioned itself as a third online bill-pay model and aggregator with an emphasis on consolidated payments and bill payments, he said.
But Doxo may have a hard time finding enough billers and companies to participate, Bezard said.
"The company needs to have a critical mass for the service to be beneficial for consumers and billers," he said.
