It is impossible for your bank to consolidate all your bills. Furthermore it is not in the interest of the biller to pass their bill data to the bank as they lose a critical customer touch point. It is impractical and not in the bank's interest to present all the bill inserts and notices or any other type of document either. Thus, the only practical path forward is to provide multiple options for payment, but not to force a link between presentment and payment. Present your electronic documents in a way that is convenient for the consumer and let them decide which payment channel they would prefer to use.
Current methodologies of tying online presentment to online payment create a solution that at least 50% of your consumer base will not use. Furthermore, as Internet banking payments continue to dominate, this will get worse.
6. Mobile matters
Web-based presentment models are not suited to even the best mobile devices. Billers and Financial Institutions must find a way to deliver a replica of the paper document that is mobile friendly and not simply summary data. Although the future of mobile presentment is still unclear, PDF is fast emerging as the most practical option in the short to medium term. Most devices can now open PDF documents and the larger, new style mobile screens are making viewing convenient.
Today the vast majority of consumers are paying electronically. The next step is overcoming the challenge of electronic bill and statement presentment in order to turn off the paper.
From the consumer's all-powerful perspective, the current paper suppression models are all fatally flawed in some way.
While online banking remains the consumer's most popular choice, it is extremely unlikely that banks can get even 30% of an average household's bills into a single location. Multiply the number of banks in any country by the number of billers and this is the number of relationships that would need to be established, one by one, before this could become a reality. This is, of course, impossible.
At best, the customer can receive summary data, which will not satisfy regulatory requirements for bill presentment, nor offer a consumer experience that will drive paper turn-off. All indications are that the majority of future payments will be initiated inside Internet banking portals. Sadly, this does little for paper suppression initiatives. Canada provides us with a great example - almost all payments are initiated inside banking portals, yet paper suppression remains under 5%.