Paperless Bill Paying

Another daily task that has been made much easier for the consumer is bill pay. Within the last decade, consumers have now become able to make bill payments via the internet. I personally utilize this tool whenever a company gives me the option to do so. When doing my online banking with Bank of America, I recently switched to online bill pay and now receive all statements via the internet. I then can transfer funds, pay off credit cards, and take care of other various bills all within the comfort of my home. There are many incentives as to why one would want to use this method.


Online bill pay is environmentally friendly. Through the use of the internet, you would no longer receive paper statements or have to send paper statements, a check, and envelope back to the company. By saving paper we are saving trees and by saving trees we are helping our ecosystem and environment. Two companies that coordinate the receipt of all bills and present them to you for online bill paying are PayTrust and XPress Bill Pay (7). Companies like these eliminate the waste and the wait; waste of paper and the wait of receiving and sending the bill.

Two other incentives are the convenience and cost savings that accompany online bill pay. "Electronic bill presentment and payment via the Internet is one of the fastest-growing areas in business," "With more than 63 billion checks written annually where 80 percent is some sort of bill payment--either business-to-business or consumer-to business--substantial cash-management benefits and customer-service opportunities exist for those who use interactive billing and payment,” said Nick Rini, columnist for Telephony (7). Online bill pay allows companies to get paid faster by eliminating the preparation time for getting the bills ready to send out in the mail. Rini estimated that in the United States alone, companies could save $200 million collectively each day if they utilized online billing (7). That would save 73,000,000,000.00 a year. Imagine what could be done with all the money that is saved, the options are endless.


Obviously something as big as this would take time to get every company on board with paperless bill pay. Is it impossible? Of course not. Will it be a difficult task? Perhaps. But sometimes the most difficult things to come by end up being the most useful and beneficial. As the world continues to become more computer and technology savvy, I believe that the opportunities are endless and for every problem we face, there is an answer somewhere waiting to be discovered. For the waste of mailing bill pay, paperless (online) bill pay could in fact be the solution to our problems.

peace, love & go noles!

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SOURCES:

(7) http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/online_bill_pay.htm

PICTURES:

http://www.bowaterecu.org/flash_logos/online%20bill%20pay%20is%20here%20copy.jpg

http://www.treehugger.com/payitgreen-homepage.jpg


http://www.cbexpress.com/images/onlineBillPay.jpg