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Online payment is catching on as consumer confidence in the system rises. Could paper bills become a thing of the past?
By: Marlene Habib, Special to The Globe and Mail; Source: Canadian Bankers Association; CheckFree Corp.
They can break the bank account, raise stress levels or make you curse the day you ever bought that house or car.
Bills are an unwelcome fact of spending life. But these days, when "waste not, want not" has as much to do with reducing unnecessary paper as it does with wasted time, paying bills is more commonly being done with a click of the mouse. It's no surprise that in these go-green times, the Internet is fast becoming the method of choice.
Many e-billing services provide online bill reception and payment at no cost, and have come a long way in providing a safe and secure virtual world.
For busy Canadians like Helen Manis, a self-described "full-time mom, full-time employee and part-time student," it has been easy to jump on the e-billing bandwagon.
Motivated by her environmentally conscious 11-year-old daughter, Polina, and after getting over her fears about security in the Web world, the 36-year-old Toronto resident is now a devotee of Canada Post's epost service.
"I pay all my bills online and, in fact, I rarely go to a bank, and the longest line I have stalled at is Starbucks over the last few years," says Ms. Manis, a consultant at Art of Facial Surgery, a Toronto cosmetic surgery practice.
"Even my school registration, transcripts and courses are chosen online, and I am billed online," she says. "It saves time and money, and it also makes it easier to help the environment."
Reducing paper waste is a major motivating factor for online-payment providers, billing companies and consumers alike.
"You can reduce your personal carbon footprint by receiving bills online and managing them securely," says Canada Post's Larry Henry, director responsible for epost. "And you no longer have to cut paper cheques - you can facilitate payment right from your bank account."
Epost allows consumers to receive, pay and store all their household bills online, at one secure site, so there's no need to keep tabs on the websites for all the various utilities or credit cards they're responsible for. The service also eliminates paper, cheques, postage and storage of paper statements. All transactions and information are saved for seven years in case the taxman beckons.
Research indicates consumers are increasingly going the green payment route.
A study released this year by the Canadian Bankers Association, for instance, suggests Canadians are increasingly using the Internet as their main mode of paying bills, says Maura Drew-Lytle, a spokeswoman for the Toronto-based association, which represents 51 chartered banks, foreign bank subsidiaries and foreign bank branches operating in Canada.
Customers at Canada's six largest banks - Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Toronto-Dominion Bank - made 246.9 million bill-payment transactions in 2007, up from 103.8 million in 2002. In comparison, the number of transactions completed via telephone declined to 54.5 million compared with 74.8 million six years earlier. Figures also fell for automated teller payments, to 57.9 million, compared with 65.1 million in 2002.
"Part of the reason people are more frequently paying bills online is more are using online banking because they are more confident with it and embracing it generally," Ms. Drew-Lytle says.
Another survey, sponsored by the Atlanta-based bill-paying service CheckFree Corp. and released in August, suggests about 63.1 million U.S. households - or three-fourths of those online - prefer computer bill paying rather than paper cheques.
Fifty-one per cent of the 3,031 U.S. consumers surveyed said they wanted to reduce paper and clutter and conserve trees, for instance, while 44 per cent said the Internet helped them save time and gain control over their finances.
Canada Post introduced epost 10 years ago as a secure electronic document delivery service "designed to mirror the depth, reach and reliability of its physical mail network" without sacrificing jobs, facilities or equipment, says Mr. Henry.
Epost allows users to register online for an epost electronic mailbox and then select what they want to receive electronically - a total of more than 200 types of bills and financial documents from more than 100 major Canadian billers (called "mailers"), including the financial services industry, utility and telecom companies, retailers and governments.
Users receive e-mail alerts indicating that their bills have arrived. They also select their method of payment, via credit card or Internet banking through the various financial institutions linked to epost.
Mr. Henry pushes the environmental-impact envelope further, citing a survey conducted for epost in July that found 69 per cent of 1,010 respondents were paying their bills online.
When epost acquired BCE Emergis Inc.'s Webdoxs - a Canadian electronic document service that had agreements with major financial institutions - in 2004, the two services had about 1.1 million users, he says. Today, epost's comprehensive electronic document delivery network has about 4.5 million users.
The environmental savings amounts to 500 million pieces of paper a year, he says from his Toronto office. "We can literally cover in paper the entire Trans-Canada Highway, an 8,030-kilometre route from Victoria to St. John's, 17 times with the potential paper we've saved."
So what's stopping other Canadians from going all-out online?
Many people are more comfortable with old fashioned mail delivery and payment, while others fear not having necessary information at their fingertips in case of a billing question, or when a computer or website decides to go offline or crash.
"I still find I am hesitant to pay for something with a credit card online," says Ms. Manis. "Identity theft is a strong concern. But epost offers a secure, private and confidential service, and that is important to me, as well as the fact that I find it really unnecessary to be receiving paper bills. |
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