Consumers want mobile bill pay options, yet billers slow to enable them

by: Brian Day

Mobile bill-pay platforms and usage saw significant growth in 2014, yet some billers still face challenges to implementing a mobile strategy.

A recent report, “A Comprehensive View of Mobile Billing and Payment: Consumer Behavior and Preferences and Billers’ Strategies and Deployments,” found 20 percent of consumer clicks on billers’ websites originated from a mobile device. This represents a 55-percent increase from the previous year. Bill payment was the most often completed consumer action once a consumer reached a biller’s website.

Additionally, data shows the ability to pay bills via a mobile device is linked to an increase in customer satisfaction and paperless electronic billing adoption. In fact, billers who have implemented a mobile bill pay and presentment (MBPP) strategy had a 44-percent higher electronic billing adoption rate than those not offering mobile bill pay technology. Further, billers offering alerts and notifications experienced a 47-percent increase in electronic billing usage, compared to billers not offering the same.

Despite the growing use of the mobile channel and the advantages tied to offering mobile bill pay, just 16 percent of billers have employed a MBPP strategy. Much of this is due to the implementation barriers billers face. The survey found the top three most frequently cited hurdles include:

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