Pitney Bowes Inc., best known for manufacturing postage meter machines, has created an online bill-payment system.
The system lets consumers receive, view and pay bills on a single website and manage other financial communications.
The Stamford, Conn., company announced the system, called Volly, on Jan. 6 and plans to launch it later this year. Besides bill-payment reminders, Volly, a free service, alerts consumers when their coupons and warranties are about to expire.
"It's a reminder platform," Bernie Gracy, Pitney Bowes' vice president of business development and operations for Volly, said. "It's a management system that will help me manage my life."
Volly uses consumers' home addresses to verify their identities during the enrollment process. Customers then enter their preference to pay bills either through the automated clearing house system (by supplying the account and bank-routing information from a personal check) or with a credit card.
Consumers who use Volly then sign up to receive bills from a list of participating billers associated with Volly.
"From there, consumers have the choice to pay the bill as soon as it comes in or to schedule payment for a certain date," Gracy said.
Pitney Bowes plans to announce in the coming weeks the biller relationships it is developing. Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. is its first partner.
Broadridge, of Lake Success, N.Y., is not a biller and specializes in financial statements, but the partnership gives Volly's Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard-certified technology "more credibility to have a company that deals with sensitive information using our secure environment," Gracy said.
He said Pitney Bowes realizes its service competes with banks' online bill-payment services, but the company believes it has several advantages over bank sites.
With Volly, consumers may pay through checking accounts from different financial institutions, for example. The system also enables consumers to sort and archive communications that might have tax implications, such as scanned images of checks written for charitable donations, Gracy said.
More consumers are using online bill payment, but financial institutions and billers still are having trouble moving them away from paper statements, said Gwenn Bezard, co-founder and research director at Aite Group.
"Billers are pushing electronic payments in an effort to cut costs," Bezard said. "Bill pay is one area companies are trying to lower costs and are becoming more aggressive [with electronic payments] compared with four or five years ago."
Pitney Bowes' eventual plan is to bring to consumers a one-stop shop for bill payment and financial management. Volly also enables consumers to manage merchant catalogs. The company expects to market Volly to early technology adopters such as young professionals and then try to capture older consumers, including soccer moms and seniors. Internal research has found that these people already pay bills online but may take more time to feel comfortable with Volly, Gracy said.
Indeed, third-party bill-payment services historically have not fared well, Bezard said. Consumers have gravitated toward using bank bill-payment services and visiting the biller's website for payment, he said. But neither of those models has gained mass consumer adoption, paving the way for Volly to make an impact, Bezard said.
"Pitney Bowes is trying to revive the third-party bill-payment model," he said.
