From TechWeb:
Control For Billers
Then there are the technology vendors. Companies such as @Work, BlueGill, eDocs, and NetDelivery provide software billers can use to create their own EBPP systems on their own sites for biller-direct applications. This gives the biller total control over the process, but it also makes for lots of work.
For example, it will be up to the biller to configure the technology to extract the appropriate data from the print files or legacy system, and to develop the appropriate business logic specific to the biller's transaction processing. In addition, incorporating personalized marketing into the application will require custom development. To help billers, the technology vendors provide products that make these tasks easier.
These same technologies can also be used by consolidators and outsourcing service providers. The result is technology and service vendors often compete with one another on some deals while partnering for other deals. For example, technology vendors provide billers with an alternative to consolidators and service companies; at the same time, the consolidators and service companies themselves use the products from the technology vendors.
Yet another group of companies is jumping into the fray: banks and financial institutions. In fact, some banks will want to act as consolidators, which means they will compete with the likes of CheckFree and TransPoint. Other banks will instead form partnerships with consolidators, acting as customer-service providers for the consolidators.
In this way, the bank can act as the entry point for customers, and can provide customers with value-added services such as tallying their bank balances -- an attractive prospect for retail banking customers. But banks that follow this approach will be in direct competition with other customer-service providers, notably portal service providers such as Yahoo and Netscape, which might launch electronic-billing capabilities.
Another critical aspect of EBPP is payment and fulfillment. Companies such as CyberCash handle the electronic payments and clear credit card transactions. In this way, the company acts as a clearinghouse between billers, banks, and customers. CheckFree also provides payment services, though it doesn't support credit card payments. |
