In the face of rising printing and mailing expenses, credit card issuers are aiming to replace expensive paper bills with low cost electronic bills. At least four different methods have been proposed to increase customer adoption of paperless bills.

American Express stopped offering paper bills to some corporate credit cardholders in June. Sprint, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have chosen the carrot approach. Both Sprint and Wells Fargo offered customers $5 to switch to paperless bills, while JPMorgan Chase offered $10 credits and sweepstakes prizes. The third method is to charge only for detailed bills. Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and AT&T charge an additional fee for itemized call details usually in the range of $1 per page. The fourth method that has been suggested is creating new products that require electronic bill presentment and payment usage. The banking industry has seen some success in this, requiring customers to give up their paper statements in order to receive a high interest rate on deposit accounts.

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