Banks can now offer low-cost electronic bill presentment and bill payment without third-party service by using Brinkman Technologies Inc.'s new FreeBill, an electronic billing system that enables banks to compete for a share of the electronic bill presentment/payment industry.
With lower front-end costs, no ongoing transaction fees, and in-house control over the bill presentment/payment process, the model allows banks to compete with CheckFree, Intuit, Microsoft, and others in the electronic billing industry. Also, banks can use the technology in-house for their loan and mortgage billing.
Mark Brinkman, BTI president says, "Until now, they've [banks] had no option other than the third-party models in which they were offered minimal opportunity to capture revenue and no control over the bill payment process. With FreeBill, banks can use existing in-house technology to recapture those fees and take in-house control over the bill payment process. They'll also be able to attract new commercial customers by competing in the market as a service bureau."
The FreeBill system will be installed on a Web server at the bank's data center or hosting service organization. The system will collect billing information from a company's accounts receivable or billing system and generate billing information in HTML format, which is sent to the customers by e-mail.
Customers who choose to receive their billing statements by e-mail will use their current Internet access services to receive bills and authorize payments with no requirement for bill payment software. To pay the bill, a customer will simply click on a "Pay Bill" hyperlink within the e-mail statement, which will link the customer to a payment screen on the company's Web site. Consumers select the format of their bills, the payment method, and the ability to set the payment amount and effective date.
Once the payment information has been received by FreeBill, the transaction is either warehoused or processed, depending on the effective date. During processing, the system will create an ACH transaction to debit the customer's account and send the payment data to the company's billing system to credit the account.
For more information about BTI, call (972) 242-8090 or visit www.banksystems.com. For more information about FreeBill visit http://www.freebill.com.
