Banks and billers face a muddled environment of electronic and paper-based processes. The latest technology merges mixed payments and streamlines conventional transactions.

B2B

"There is clear value to providing on-line bills for consumers.  But for businesses the justification is much stronger.  A bank may have 14 million customers on the retail side and they may only have a few thousand commercial clients.  But each one of those commercial clients is extremely valuable to them.  You only have to get a couple corporate clients to adopt B2B EBPP to make the system pay for itself."  -- Errol Hau,  Director of Product Marketing at CheckFree, leading provider of electronic billing and payment services

And, those commercial clients NEED EBPP.  "Today when a bill comes in to a business, it has to be broken down into different subsets each targetted at a different cost center, division, or across different geographies through very arduous process.  Once that is done, each division in each department has to analyze their part of the bill according to their billing contracts. Then you have to re-aggregate the bill back together and send it to the central accounts payable department which determines what to pay back to the biller.  A great many companies can't pull it together together fast enough to take advantage of all the trading discounts they're entitled to."

This emphasis on B2B is not just a CheckFree initiative, it's an industry wide movement.  Expect to see a heavy emphasis on business to business bill payment and presentation at all a big trade shows this fall.