From the Princeton Telecom press release:
<<LADWP, the nation's largest city-owned utility, will soon open its Web- based payment service for 3.5 million residential customers. Both companies expect to charge customers about 20 cents per bill paid -- less than the price of a stamp.
''Utilities are increasingly turning to Princeton TeleCom's Presentment Server as the clear choice for allowing their customers to pay bills at any time from any place,'' >>
I question whether the billpay enthusiast will want to access ebills web site-by-web site, and pay 20 cents each to order the payment.
On the bank-branded bill pay service battlefield, I predict free ebill will dominate for a long while as a traffic builder for the bank's web site. A loss leader service.
While the ebill pricing from CF and MSFDC is still hard to pin down, both seem to be headed toward most of the revenue coming from the billers. CF wants to charge the site host a smidgen per bill, too.
Since it should provide for a more balanced and possibly lower cost for the billers, it seems like the CF approach will appeal to more billers. The existing CF bank clients may just have to take CF's pricing offer, like it or not. If I am right, CF may use this strategy to sew up the big early share of ebillers, by having already sewed up the big share of billpay providers.
We'll see. This is very interesting to watch.
Brian
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