“Build and they will buy,” was Henry Ford’s mantra in the early 1900’s when he introduced his first horseless carriage, the Model T. He built, and consumers eagerly lapped up the cars as soon as they came off the assembly line. But today, more than a century later, the days of Ford’s Model T are long gone.

Biller organizations – utilities, telecom, credit cards, mortgage companies and others that bill consumers on a recurring basis – can no longer be confident that all they have to do is provide easy and convenient electronic options for bill payments and their customers will adopt them. Results of a Billing and Collections Survey by PayStream Advisors, a Charlotte, NC-based research and consulting company, validate this fact.

The survey revealed that biller organizations were forging ahead on the automation curve – with 74 percent of survey respondents offering an electronic option when it was time to pay the bill, whether it was accepting payment over the Internet, the telephone or even automatic recurring debit. However, it was a completely different story when the survey measured actual consumer adoption and usage of these electronic bill payment methods. While there were wide variations by industry, the common trend was that less than a quarter of consumers, on average, were taking advantage of the alternative payment mechanisms offered, preferring to rely on paper-based payments through cash or the ubiquitous check.

There is no doubt that billers are building robust e-payment systems hoping to reduce costs and improve customer service, but consumers are not always buying into the value proposition. Here are some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind to help billers move from implementation to adoption of e-payments quickly and efficiently.

• DO make the system simple and intuitive to use to increase adoption of e-payments.
• DON’T offer a patchwork of services for different payment channels and types.
• DO charge convenience fees for flexible payment options and to migrate consumers from expensive to cost-effective channels.
• DON’T ignore the fact that billers and consumers have divergent priorities - consumers want to pay late while billers want to accelerate payment
• DO design an e-payments program with the appropriate consumer incentives in mind.

Download the PayStream Technology Insight Series Report Consumer Payments Automation: Paper or Plastic?

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