Email Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) is fast becoming the preferred process for companies who are looking for cost efficiencies, faster payments and a reduction in their environmental impact and carbon footprint.
Paper bill delivery is simply replaced with electronic bill delivery.
There is a small niche of EBPP offerings which drive paper turn-off, by providing an alternative delivery mechanism, (a secure electronic ‘push’ delivery channel), which effectively delivers eBills directly to customers’ email inboxes, instead of requiring them to collect bills from a website.
Consumers are becoming more aware of the environment and are thus looking for ways to ‘go green’. Many are expecting their service providers (banks, telco’s and utilities) to implement green initiatives. Choosing an eBill over a paper bill directly contributes to saving trees, and consumers support it.
Switching to electronic billing and payment will make a significant, positive impact on the environment. According to statistics published on the PayItGreen Alliance website, every year, paper cheques use more than 674 million gallons of fuel and contribute more than 3.6 million tons of harmful greenhouse gases to the environment. It is estimated that every year around 13 million trees are needed to produce all the paper invoices used in Europe.
As companies convert customers to receiving digital communication, there are significant cost savings to be enjoyed with every eBilling run. The business case for eBilling is very solid, and in most cases the investment required to set up this process is very often recovered within the first few months.
An organisation can save 1-2% of its turnover by replacing paper bills and optimising the related processes. Thus, the payback time on investments in eBilling projects can be as short as six months. Billers throughout Europe are realising how quickly enterprise costs can be reduced. According to Billentis, in 2008, roughly 1 million European businesses and 23 million consumers exchanged one billion electronic invoices. It is expected that every day in 2009 1,200 businesses and 11,000 consumers will become new eInvoicing users.
In addition to saving costs and the environment, Email Bill Presentment and Payment Solutions can also save time, as receiving and paying bills online each month reduces the time it takes billing-to-payment cycle from days to minutes.
EBPP clients are predominantly companies that produce and disseminate high volumes of bills each month – in the financial services, telecommunications and utilities industries. They are currently experiencing phenomenal benefits by replacing paper bills with secure electronic documents.
As the world adopts a more ‘Go Green’ attitude, many companies are investing in going green initiatives such as EBPP, which ultimately provides a tangible demonstration of their commitment to carbon footprint reduction.
About Striata
Striata’s Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets that deliver a rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and an enhanced customer experience.
Striata revolutionises the way bills, statements, policies, collection notices, letters, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid. Registration requirements are eliminated by emailing feature rich, interactive, encrypted documents directly to the inbox and enabling innovative 1-click electronic payment from within the document itself. Direct email delivery of bills and statements dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic documents, paper turn off and ePayments. This enables Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI; complement their existing self-service and e-communication strategies; significantly reduce paper output and to meet their carbon footprint/environmental impact targets.