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S.A. firm billserv.com unveils bill-paying portal on web
Sebastian Weiss
If you ever wondered what exactly billserv.com Inc. is up to, now you can go see for yourself.
The company's web portal -- bills.com -- is up and running on the World Wide Web and will soon offer consumers the opportunity to receive and pay their bills online for a low monthly fee. (The full address of the portal site is bills.com on the web.)
In addition to electronic bill paying, the site also offers services like stock, insurance and home mortgage quotes, international financial news and other services and links.
"We thought we should wrap it more into a consumer financial portal so consumers can do more than just pay their bills," says David Jones, billserv.com's senior vice president.
For now, consumers can only preregister to pay their bills through bills.com. Some 3,000 people have preregistered so far, according to Jones.
Once the service is up and running, customers will be able to receive and pay 20 bills online for $6 a month.
Checkfree
Bills.com's electronic bill paying service is actually being powered by Norcross, Ga.-based Checkfree Corp.
Checkfree, which provides electronic payment processing for financial institutions and financial software programs, has begun targeting web portals.
"We act as the electronic postal service," says Jan Peterson, Checkfree's director of strategic alliances.
Anyone who signs up with bills.com will be able to pay bills issued by the 64 companies Checkfree has relationships with, including AT&T, MCI and 14 major utility companies.
Checkfree is the same company that is powering the electronic bill paying service provided by Yahoo and other web heavy-weights. This means that bills.com will be competing with the likes of Yahoo for customers.
When exactly consumers will be able to actually pay their bills through bills.com and the other web portals is in Checkfree's hands.
Peterson says he expects the service to be up and running by early next year at the latest.
By then, Checkfree's roster of billers should be even bigger.
The company is on track to sign up at least 50 more billers over the next 12 months, according to Peterson, who adds that billserv.com and Checkfree are working together to identify small and midsized billers that could be added to Checkfree's distribution pipeline.
"It's starting to accelerate now," Peterson says.
Service bureau
Although bills.com, which is wholly owned by billserv.com, is billserv.com's most visible presence on the web, it's only a small part of what the company actually does.
Billserv.com bills itself as a service bureau specializing in Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) services to small and medium-sized billers.
These billers can outsource their entire EBPP system to billserv.com. Locally based Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. is billserv.com's largest customer.
Billserv.com spends the bulk of its time working behind the scenes of the online billing industry, acting as an intermediary between the billers and the consolidators that operate "front-ends" where customers can pay their bills electronically, like the web portals.
According to Jones, one of the main concerns voiced by billers who are considering offering their customers the ability to pay their bills online is: "Where will our customers be going to pay their bills on the web?"
Although billserv.com can't control what other bill paying sites look like, it can control the experience offered by bills.com.
"We really feel bills.com completes the value chain we offer (billers)," Jones says.
Jones also hopes that bills.com will help billserv.com attract more investors to its stock. "Stocks that are more consumer-oriented do better," Jones says.
Small Cap Exchange
Billserv.com, which currently trades on the Over the Counter market, is seeking approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to be listed on the NASDAQ Small Cap Exchange, a move which would make the company more appealing to both individual and institutional investors.
One of San Antonio's newest public companies, billserv.com went public late last year through a reverse merger with a Nevada-based shell company.
The company, which currently has 11 million shares outstanding and a market capitalization of about $65 million, plans to issue a secondary offering of stock early next year that could yield between $15 million and $20 million in growth capital.
Although it is making progress on its business plan, billserv.com does not yet have any revenues to speak of.
Online billing, however, is bound to become a moneymaker. An Internet-billing research report issued by the New York-based investment firm of Salomon Smith Barney indicates that the nation's 110 million households each receive an average of 12 bills per month. If 33 percent of U.S. households would pay their bills online, the potential size of the e-billing market is $2.1 billion annually, according to the report.
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