On the web:

• Fed Studying Risks at Online Payment Providers - Wall St. Journal - "This is very much on our radar screen and we are carefully trying to identify where the risks are…"
• New partners, new cards and TV commercials at Dynamics - Pittsburgh Business Times - "Next generation payment card company Dynamics is unveiling a second tier of its ePlate card."
• The Time For A Stateless Global Reserve Currency Is Fast Approaching - The Genesis Block - "The problem is not that the reserve currency is issued by the United States, the problem is that it’s tied to any state at all."
• NFC payment services 'struggling to gain traction': Gartner - Computerworld - "Gartner predicted that NFC would account for only 2 per cent of total worldwide mobile payments this year and only increase to 5 per cent in 2017."
• PayPal challenging BPAY - ITworld (Australia) - "PayPal has announced a deal in Australia with utility company Australian Power & Gas and Telstra to allow bill payments via PayPal online and on mobile."
• Facebook banking in Turkey - Financial Services Club Blog - "Turkey is in fact a hotbed of innovation in banking, not just because of its growth market status, but also due to government deregulation to encourage more competition in banking."
• M-Pesa upgrade to ease payment of electricity bills - Business Daily Africa - "The mobile firm has already awarded Chinese telecoms giant Huawei the tender to migrate M-Pesa to the new platform…"

On the wires:

• ZTE Joygor Partners With Fortumo For App Billing and In-App Purchasing - "ZTE Joygor will use Fortumo's billing connections in 80 countries for monetizing users on ZTE Joygor's app platform, which comes preloaded on millions of ZTE devices worldwide.
• Merchant Warehouse Partners with Retail Pro International to Enhance Customer Experience - "Genius allows retailers to accept any type of payment in a low-risk manner, and turn basic transactions into deeper interactions with their customers."
• Financial Services Industry Leaders and Entrepreneurs Gather to Examine Market Trends and Consumer Needs

According to a study of 1,000 billers released by NACHA, Direct Payment via ACH is the leading method consumers in the US currently use to pay their bills.

The study found that the great majority of billers – more than three-quarters of those that offer electronic payment options – offer Direct Payment via ACH with almost 50% of consumer bills paid through this method. Of the rest, 42% percent of consumer bills are still paid through the mail, and 11 percent are paid with credit/debit cards.

The findings also show that billers prefer receiving ACH payments over cards 48 percent to 21 percent. Specifically, billers prefer recurring ACH payments, citing this option as the most favorable payment method.

Consumers, on the other hand, prefer one-time ACH payments for bill pay. Of the 47 percent of consumer bills paid via Direct Payment, 25 percent are one-time ACH payments, 11 percent are recurring ACH payments, and another 11 percent are ACH payments originated by biller service providers.

Direct Payment via ACH provides the control, security, and simplicity that consumers are looking for when paying their bills,” said Janet O. Estep, NACHA president and CEO.

“Additionally, for billers, Direct Payment via ACH transactions provide costs savings, improve operating efficiencies, and make a positive impact on the environment. There are still many checks being mailed today, so there is a significant opportunity to increase Direct Payment adoption, and during May – Direct Deposit and Direct Payment via ACH Month – we direct both billers and consumers to the available resources and proven practices expanding Direct Payment usage.”

On the web:

• Fed Survey Shows Growth in Mobile Banking, Payments - "Americans are increasingly using their mobile phones to access bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial accounts…"
• Bitcoin Investors Hang On for the Ride - WSJ
• Why Libertarians and gold hoarders love Bitcoins - PandoDaily - "What kind of people use Bitcoins, the digital currency designed by cryptographers to be untraceable?"
• Microsoft Account Gets More Secure - The Official Microsoft Blog - "This release enables optional two-step verification for your entire Microsoft account."
• Amazon Patent Describes A Mobile Payment System That Keeps Transactions Anonymous - TechCrunch - "The patent describes a way to sub in unique identifiers for information like name and email address…"
• Zuora: Faster Time to Commerce? Check Out Our New REST APIs - "Zuora has introduced 22 new REST API calls focused on enabling website commerce integrations."
• Authentication a barrier to online commerce for most people - Computing.co.uk - "Inadequate authentication and the plethora of user names and passwords people need to remember is a rising barrier to online commerce"

On the wires:

• NACHA’s Council for Electronic Billing and Payment to Launch Industry Evaluation of the QR Encoding for Consumer Bill Pay Guidelines - "Industry input is vital as we work to establish a single QR code specification so consumers can easily view and pay bills from a mobile device…"
• First Data Enhances its Vision Payment Solution’s Global Capabilities with VisionPLUS® Flex - "In a single platform, the VisionPLUS Flex solution supports issuing and acquiring of credit, debit, prepaid, consumer and commercial cards for private label, American Express®, JCB, MasterCard® and Visa® global brands, as well as consumer loans."
• American Express Reports First Quarter EPS of $1.15, up 7% From A Year Ago; Revenues and Cardmember Spending Rise, Credit Quality Remains Excellent - "We are off to a strong start in 2013, thanks to our ability to grow revenue in a slow growth economy, control expenses and maintain a strong balance sheet…"
• New Sign-up Process - payleven Opens Doors to Private Individuals in UK - "Today marks a major milestone for payleven on that journey as we have solved two long-standing problems faced by the payments industry- designing a simple, instant signup process and empowering individuals as merchants."
• Toshiba Integrates Isis SmartTap™ into ACE Point-of-Sale - "Integration of Isis SmartTap with the ACE POS platform can fundamentally transform the way consumers and retailers interact at the POS."
• MCX Selects Gemalto for Mobile Commerce Platform - "The initial MCX wallet, which will be primarily barcode and cloud-based, will run on Gemalto’s Allynis Mobile Payment platform."
• Fiserv Makes Real Time Person-to-Person Payments a Reality with Popmoney Instant Payments - "We believe real-time payments are increasingly important to consumers in many day-to-day situations, and that includes sending money to people they know or owe."
• ACI Worldwide Empowers Financial Institutions to Increase Efficiency of Card Issuing and Account Management - "ACI Issuer is designed to help financial institutions lower operating costs with expected reductions in new product development, long-term maintenance and infrastructure costs."
• Western Union Continues to Expand in Mexico - "We see a great opportunity to expand in Mexico through existing and new Agent relationships such as Bancoppel…"

On the web:

• 'Cover' Automates Restaurant Payments, Enabling Diners to Eat and Leave - Springwise
• PayPal Co-Founder Gets Back Into Payments Startups With 'Affirm' - San Jose Mercury News
• Coupon Clipping Declines As Shoppers Get Savvier - NBCnews.com

On the wires:

• Fortumo Launches Payments on Windows Phone
• Payment Processor i2c Takes Money Management to the Next Level
• TIO Networks Surpasses 1 Million Transactions Across All TIO Wallet Members
• hyperWALLET Announces New Payment Services and Expanded Global Payments Network
• BofA Merrill Launches Dodd-Frank Payments Solutions for Financial Institution Clients
• Zeevex Partners with Valve to Provide Cash-Based Consumers More Purchasing Options

Zipmark has announced the national availability of its secure digital check payment platform, the first online and mobile payment system designed to deposit guaranteed funds into a business's operating account on the morning of the next business day.

"Zipmark secure digital checks improve the way small businesses send and collect money from their customers by bringing check payments into the 21st century," said Jay Bhattacharya, CEO and co-founder of Zipmark. "Zipmark is as much a risk management platform as it is a payment platform. We take on the risk of the transaction and guarantee funds to billers."

Zipmark's transaction fee is only 1% with a $5 cap.

PayTap is a new social bill pay services that premiered this week at both TechCrunch Disrupt SF and FinovateFall 2012 in NY. The services supports payment cards, bank account, PayPal, and Dwolla payments.

Tap into your network of family and friends to get bills paid. You can share with one person or collaborate with many and the money goes directly to the biller.

Their website is at www.paytap.com. Glenbrook has previously blogged about the emerging domain of social payments.

Billeo has announced its ZipThru Pay and ZipThru Buy services, which allow Billeo's business customers to simplify and speed up the online shopping and bill pay payment experience.

From paying a bill to purchasing an item online, the ZipThru services allow businesses to provide consumers an easy and transparent online or in-app payment process that takes just seconds to complete. By leveraging Billeo's powerful Active-Context Platform™ and rich biller and merchant directories, the ZipThru services connect Billeo's business customers with billers and merchants that accept card payments online. The technology navigates thru the payment or checkout process, auto-fills the payment details and captures the payment confirmation -- simplifying the payment and purchase processes to one or two clicks.

Fiserv announced the launch of 'E-bill Introduction', a new feature within the CheckFree® RXP payment suite.

E-bill Introduction offers consumers an opportunity to receive electronic bills (e-bills) via their online banking service for an introductory period during which they also continue to receive paper bills in the mail. Pilots of the feature conducted with five financial institutions delivered solid results, with consumers enrolled in the pilot activating three times more e-bills than consumers who were not enrolled.

Western Union announced the release of an enhancement to its Western Union Speedpay service designed to help billers meet growing consumer demand to receive electronic bills through smartphones and mobile devices.

“Our Western Union Payments Money Mindset Index shows that consumers, whose use of mobile devices is outpacing all other media, are looking for a wider range of payment options from billers,” David Shapiro, senior vice president, Payments, Western Union, said. “Western Union is dedicated to providing billers with robust bill pay solutions, while giving consumers a variety of user-friendly options to receive and pay their bills.”

The enhancement was developed with eBill presentment specialist, Striata, and operates across multiple platforms and devices, including Android, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad.

AT&T has introduced a new billing service called 'AT&T Video Bill' that steps a customer through every part of their bill, explains the charges, and lets people pay their bill upon completion.

A few months ago, we introduced a service we call the U-verse video bill to new U-verse Voice, TV and Internet customers, as well as existing customers who change or upgrade their service. This is an automatically-generated, customized video with computer animation and voice narration that explains the elements of your bill.

Be sure to have a look at the demonstration video. Bill Pay isn't what it used to be.

doxo announced the launch of a new single-click mobile bill payment capability, and added a new smart phone app, doxo Mobile for Android, to its existing iPhone mobile app.

“The doxo mission is to massively simplify the experience of interacting with providers and paying bills. The new capabilities of our mobile app make bill paying simpler than ever. So simple, in fact, that doxo users are paying their bills an average of 10 days sooner than they would through traditional mail,” said Steve Shivers CEO of doxo. “doxo Mobile takes the hassle out of bill payment, and provides an innovative, free service for businesses to offer to their customers, without having to develop their own app.”

New research from Fiserv indicates there are "significant short-term and long-term shifts in the way consumers pay their bills. The 2011 Billing Household Survey showed that consumers use multiple payment channels on an ongoing basis, with nearly one out of every five online consumer households changing the way they pay bills each month. Mobile bill payments are on the rise, with more than six million Americans using smartphones to pay their bills in the past year. Interest in electronic bills (e-bills) has also hit an all-time high."

Pageonce has announced a mobile bill pay service that gives consumers remote control over when and how they pay their bills.

The award-winning Pageonce Money & Bills already lets users automatically track all types of bills -- from rent and mortgage, utilities, and cell phone to credit cards -- and alerts them when a bill is due. Now Pageonce gives users the option to pay immediately from their choice of accounts with a few taps on their smartphone. Pageonce makes paper bills, checks and stamps, and logging into several different websites for online bill pay, obsolete -- helping users save time and avoid annoying late and overdraft fees.

On the web:

• A Woman, A Cupcake, A Bank And A Square: Why Card Companies Are Scared Of Change - TechCrunch
• Apple's iPad Already Replacing Cash Registers by the Bushel - AllThingsD

On the wires:

• Bill.com Launches Printed Invoice Mailing Service, Adds QR Codes
• WePay Enhances Easy-To-Use API for Developers and Merchants

iMingle Insurance has announced a new instant bill pay process that utilizes QR codes embedded in billing statements and the ever-popular mobile phone.

When iMingle customers receive a bill, they can just open it, scan it, pay it and shred it. The process is completely hassle-free, with no need to get to a computer, remember any usernames and passwords or search for credit card information. Select billing emails also include a direct link to a customer’s payment site, with no login required.

On the wires:

• Striata and Payments Gateway Partner to Securely Deliver Property Tax Bills Electronically
• USA Technologies Transaction Processing Volume Growth Continues

On the web:

• Mobile Money to Deliver on the Promise | Merchant Account Industry & Credit Card Processing Blog
• Credit Slips: How Credit Card Companies Get Around the Card Act

On the wires:

• CHARGE Anywhere Turns Google Nexus Phone into NFC Payment Acceptance Terminal
• hyperWALLET Announces Support for SEPA Credit Transfers across Europe
• Litle Vault PayPage Removes All Merchant Exposure To Card Data During Online Acceptance
• Accertify is Selected by Abercrombie & Fitch for Online Fraud Prevention
• Nine Credit Unions Select Fiserv for Account Processing
• Fifth Third Processing and Planet Payment to Launch 'Pay in Your Currency' on ATMs
• Heartland Delivers Wait Management and SMS Marketing Solution to Restaurants with Freshtxt

On the web:

• Springwise: Snap a Photo of a Bill, Then Click to Pay
• Mobile Commerce Daily: PayPal Mobile Payments Growth
• Mashable: Starbucks Card Mobile Is a Hit: 3 Million People Pay Via Phone App
• New York Times: As Phones Become Wallets, Many Have Hands Out

On the wires:

• Columbus Water Works Enhances Consumer Payment Choice with Secure Vault Payments
• Bill.com Receivables Officially Launches
• Prepaid Card Processor i2c Expands International Presence
• Visa Completes Acquisition of PlaySpan

On the web:

• Wall Street Journal: Checking Will Stay Free, Says PNC Bank
• Digital Transactions: Cumbersome Paperwork Rule Will Go Away in April for Visa Fraud Chargebacks
• Inside Mobile Apps: A Google In-App Payments Solution for the Web Appears Slated For Launch in May

On the wires:

• CashStar Raises $5 Million for Digital Gifting and Incentives Innovation
• Faster Payments Highlight CheckFree RXP Update from Fiserv
• Adknowledge Unveils Mobile Monetization Solution for Apple App Developers
• Maritz Real-Time and ViVOtech Partner on NFC-Based Promotions and Loyalty Services
• First Data Selects Beanstream to Drive Its Payment Platform in Canada
• MetroBank and Accertify Announce Partnership to Fight Credit Card in Latin America
• DeviceFidelity Makes More Smartphones Available for Visa Mobile Contactless Payments
• HomeATM-AnywhereCommerce and CardinalCommerce Partner on Online PIN Debits
• NETBANX To Embedded Support for ParentMail +Pay School Payments System (UK)

On the web:

• All Things Digital: Square Wants to Replace Everything, From the Receipt to the Register
• Cleartrip Blog: How India's Banks Killed the Future of Commerce (with Strong Authentication)
• New York Times: Google's Schmidt Sees Payments as a Big Business

doxo has announced the availability of doxoPay, its new online bill payment feature. "doxo allows consumers to receive, manage, file – and now pay their bills – from multiple service providers such as credit cards, utilities, cable, mobile, insurance and mortgages — in one place at doxo.com."

MasterCard and Telefónica have announced a joint venture to development mobile financial solutions in 12 countries in Latin America where Telefónica is present with the Movistar® brand.

As part of this agreement, Movistar® mobile subscribers in Latin America will be able to use their mobile phones for person-to-person money transfers, bill payment, mobile airtime reload and retail purchases, among other services.

Sprint announced a partnership with doxo to offer its customers a "new, easy-to-use paperless billing solution". Sprint customers will be able to receive, manage and file all of their Sprint bills through doxo.

NetBanker had a nice post a couple of weeks ago on doxo might remake the eBilling.

Elavon has announced the release of its Enterprise Billing Solution (EBS) that delivers an efficient, end-to-end solution to businesses seeking a single source provider for both electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) and merchant card processing services.

Mitek has announced a new app that lets users pay bills with their smartphone camera.

After establishing online-bill-payment arrangements as part of their banking account, users of Mobile Photo Bill Pay can initiate e-bill-payment sessions on their smartphones, then simply snap photos of the bills they want to pay, verify the payment information and click on the app's "PAY" button.

BillFloat, a provider of small-dollar loans for bill payment, and Credit.com, a credit education company, and will announce a strategic partnership next week at Finovate 2010. BillFloat will be featured alongside Credit.com tools, consumer credit news, a selection of credit cards, credit scoring products, and credit product reviews.

"In contrast to payday lenders that have encountered resistance from regulators for high cost lending practices, BillFloat’s solution embraces the FDIC’s Small Dollar Loan Template. "

MoneyGram has announced an agreement with BillingTree to provide same-day, cash bill pay services at MoneyGram's approximately 35,000 agent locations nationwide under the brand name BillingTree PaynCash. BillingTree provides billers with a range of options for accepting payments such as ACH and credit card via online, IVR/VRU, and MOTO channels. The addition of MoneyGram's agent network rounds out BillingTree's suite of payment services, giving consumers another option when it is necessary to pay in cash or to make a last-minute payment.

Fiserv recently released the results of its 2010 Billing Household Survey, which offers a holistic view on consumer use of a broad range of billing and payment options.

The surveyed consumers reported increased usage of online, phone, and walk-in payment methods, and 23% said that they change the ways they pay their bills month-to-month. In addition, consumers indicated that making a payment or viewing a bill are the primaryreasons they visit the websites of companies from which they receive services. The survey also revealed that consumers who receive paperless bills are more satisfied with their service provider than those who receive mailed paper bills.

Bill.com has announced Bill.com Zen (Zero Data Entry) that eliminates the process of manually typing data into disparate banking or accounting systems and automatically maintaining important vendor information. Users simply fax, email, or upload bills into their Bill.com account and are notified by email when their bills are ready to review and pay, accuracy guaranteed. READ MORE »

Billeo has announced an expansion of its Biller Directory to help consumers pay their bills instantly with a credit, debit or prepaid card at more than 10,000 companies across 26 categories – from cable service providers to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Billeo says its directory is the largest of its kind and "the defacto standard in the U.S. and Canada." Billeo's Biller Directory now covers more than 15,000 companies with two-thirds accepting card-based bill payments. READ MORE »

MasterCard has announced a new bill pay service for MasterCard prepaid card issuers and program managers, and their cardholders. According to MasterCardh, "this new service leverages the capabilities of payment platform and services provider Aliaswire, combined with the industry-leading bill payment solutions of MasterCard RPPS, to offer MasterCard prepaid partners a feature-rich bill payment service that integrates easily with their prepaid card program, and enables MasterCard prepaid cardholders to conveniently pay bills online or via telephone." READ MORE »