Size Matters in Direct Biller Web Savvy

Small-to-middle sized billers—those without the hundreds of thousands of statements to send out each month—are not exactly making a splash with their online prowess, a new report from Aite Group finds. While mega-sized direct billers are known for lapping banks in online bill-pay functionality, the small players who generally send out fewer than 10,000 a month “remain under-equipped” in their bill-payment channels, and many of those surveyed may be two years away from handling Web-site transactions (27 percent) or even the ability to accept online banking e-payments (15 percent). These companies will be depending on advanced bill-pay capabilities from their banks, which Aite cautions “should be wary of discouraging…billers’ faith in e-bills.” E-mail is the up-and-coming channel where many of these dinky billers expect to see strong bill-pay growth.