Voca, the payment clearing house formerly known as Bacs,
is to launch an online bill payment and viewing service later this
year in conjunction with two high street
banks.
Lloyds TSB and HSBC will offer the service to their customers in
the latest attempt to get a UK-wide online bill viewing and payment
service off the ground. Customers will be able to both view details
and pay their bills from their bank's website.
The company behind the service, called OneVu, is a joint venture
between Voca and US software supplier Checkfree, whose software
will transfer billing information from banks and utilities.
Voca and Checkfree believe there is a gap in the market for a
joined-up billing service supported by the high street banks and
utilities. Customers will nominate bills to appear on their bank
website so that they can view details before paying.
Voca will use its clearing network for the service with Checkfree
providing its financial messaging, workflow and compliance
software. By the end of this year, OneVu said it aimed to have nine
billing companies signed up to the service.
Martin Kearsley, chief executive at OneVu, said the company had
learnt from previous attempts to launch a common e-billing
system.
"E-billing has been tried and has failed in the UK," he said. "One
reason why it failed was that it was too ambitious too soon. We
would prefer to walk before we run. That is why initially it will
be aimed at consumers rather than businesses."
Currently about 60% of the 14 million people in the UK who bank
online pay their bills online, according to OneVu, which believes
its unified approach will prove popular.
On average e-billing nearly doubles the customer retention rate for
companies, OneVu also claimed.
Alistair Newton, principal analyst at Gartner, said banks would
have to decide whether e-billing was a high priority compared to
other demands on their budgets such as corporate governance
regulations.
"For banks it will be a question of whether the payments service is
about providing enough additional benefits to the business compared
to the cost of supporting it," he said.
"Banks have too many things to do and too few IT resources to do it
with."
Previous online billing plans cancelled
Previous attempts to create a nationwide system for unified
e-billing have failed despite the benefits for business and
consumer. Plans for an online bill presentation and payment system
under the umbrella of payment association Apacs were ditched in
2001 when banks failed to back the initiative. In 2002 Intelligent
Processing Solutions - a payment processing provider created by
supplier Unisys and banks HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Barclays - announced
plans for a common system that could handle hundreds of millions of
bill presentations and payments over the internet. The launch of
account aggregation services by some banks were initially
overshadowed by data protection concerns.