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Bill Centers

The electronic bill payment portal...

Access Electronic Bill Servicers

• Bill Managers
• Bill Centers
• Bill Brokers

Service Provider

We have defined 3 classifications:

Bill Managers

Bill Managers are services that ONLY pay bills against the consumer's checking account.
Bill Managers DO NOT manage the bills or reduce the consumer's paper bills.

Bill Centers

Bill Centers can be used as Bill Managers as well as a service to collect and manage your paper bills.
Bill Centers provide the customer the ability to have Billers send paper bills to the Bill Center. The Bill Center digitizes bills and the consumer can view and download bills over the Internet.
Bill Centers pay your bills by printing a check directly against your checking account and mailing to your Biller.
Bill Centers pay selected Billers by writing an electronic check against your checking account.

Bill Brokers

Bill Brokers can be used as Bill Managers as well as a service to collect and manage your paper bills.
Bill Brokers provide you the ability to have Billers send paper bills to the Bill Broker. The Bill Broker digitizes the bills and you can view and download bills over the Internet.
Bill Brokers pay your bills by debiting your checking account on the payment date and mailing a check drawn on the Bill Brokers checking account to your Biller.
Bill Brokers make money off the float. This means they take money out of your checking account and deposit the money in their account. Until the Biller cashes the Bill Broker's check, the interest that accrues on the money belongs to the Bill Broker.

Bill Scanning

Bill scanning is when you direct your Biller (Credit card, mortgage, electric company) to physically mail your bills to the Bill Center or Bill Broker.

The advantage of bill scanning is that you no longer get mail. You don't get the bill every month and you don't get all the junk mail that goes along with having bills mailed to your house.

With scanned bills, you can view a bill on your PC over the Internet, print the bill or save the image on your PC.

The disadvantages are as follows:

• It take 60-90 days to get most of your billers to change their mailing address to the Bill Manager and Bill Broker. If you are not happy with the service or you find a lower cost option, the process of changing the address is very cumbersome.
• For online purchases where your billing address has to match perfectly with your credit card address, you have to remember your Bill Manager or Bill Broker mailing address to make an online purchase.
• Once you discontinue service with a Bill Manager or Bill Broker and you have not religiously downloaded the images of your bills to your PC, the process can take many hours. Once you discontinue service you no longer have access to your bills.
• Bill Managers and Bill Brokers don't always scan your bills immediately upon receipt. Bills have a tendancy to stockpile if the volume exceeds their staffing capacity.
• Some Bill Managers and Bill Brokers scanning systems are better than others and your bills may not be legible.
• You no longer get promotions like low interest rate cards, balance transfers, phone deals, etc..
• Insurance documents such as proof of insurance cards can be discarded.

Bill Tracking

Bill tracking is a tremendous advantage in using any of these services. Instead of filing bills Centers can be used as Bill Managers as well as a service to collect and manage your paper bills.

The problem exists when you decide to discontinue service... unless you are in the habit of always downloading your bills to your PC, whenever you make a payment.

Payment Tracking

Payment tracking is a great advantage. The challenge here is that the function of payment tracking is no longer of any significant value. Most financial institutions now provide customers on-line access to their checking account. There is very little you can benefit from tracking your checks with these services that you can't do with your own bank for FREE.

Payment Scheduling

Payment scheduling is probably one of the single-most valuable aspect of these services. Every service offers you the ability to say when you want the payment mailed or received. You can generally go as far out as you want on the calendar and you can change any future scheduled payments at a later date.

Most credit card companies and mortgage companies now provide you the ability to make payments on-line, but the disadvantage is that almost all of them only allow you a very narrow period. This means that if you want to pay your Discover Card 4 days before the due date, you have to remember to go to discovercard.com a week before the due date to make a payment. You can't schedule a payment close to the due date when you actually receive your bill.

Most mortgage companies still charge a $4-10 per electronic payment and you can only choose a date prior to the 1st of the month. You can't take advantage of the 15 day grace period.

Direct Payment

This is the most important element of selecting a vendor. This is one of those fine print elements you have to be very careful about because it can mean as much as 3 weeks of money in your account vs. the service providers account... and in plain english "..its either in your pocket or theirs.."

Direct payment means the service provider you select pays all the bills directly from your checking account:

• The service provider can print a check and mail it.
• The service provider can debit your checking account and transfer the funds directly to your biller

This means that if you instruct your service provider to send $100 to CitiBank on June 1, the service provider will print a check and mail it on June 1, hopefully. Your checking account is not debited until the check clears. If CitiBank receives the check on June 5, your checking account will probably not get debited until June 7. Likewise, if your service provider holds checks to save on postage and your check doesn't get delivered to CitiBank until June 20, your checking account is debited most likely on June 22. YOUR MONEY IS UNDER YOUR CONTROL AT ALL TIMES.

If the service provider has an electronic transfer relationship with your Biller, the order to your bank to debit $100 would be transmitted on June 1, the bank would transfer the $100 to CitiBank on June 2, and CitiBank will show payment received June 3.

Indirect Payment

This is the most important element of selecting a vendor. This is one of those fine print elements you have to be very careful about because it can mean as much as 3 weeks of money in your account vs. the service providers account... and in plain english "..its either in your pocket or theirs.."

Inirect payment means the service provider you select pays all the bills from THEIR checking account:

• The service provider can print a check and mail the check drawn on the Service Provider's account.
• The service provider can debit THEIR checking account and transfer the funds directly to your biller

This means that if you instruct your service provider to send $100 to CitiBank on June 1, the service provider will debit YOUR checking account on June 1. YOUR MONEY IS GONE!!!! When they wish, which is as close to the due date as possible, the service provider will print a check and mail it, hopefully. Remember, your checking account is debited June 1, not when the check clears. If CitiBank receives the check on June 5, your service provider's checking account will probably not get debited until June 7. So for a week, YOUR money earned your service provider interest.

Likewise, if your service provider holds checks to save on postage and THEIR check doesn't get delivered to CitiBank until June 20, THEIR checking account is debited most likely on June 22. YOUR MONEY EARNED YOUR SERVICE PROVIDER INTEREST FOR 3 WEEKS.

There is no governemt regulatory body that supervises these service providers. There are no guarantees that we are aware of and we don't know of any guarantee that your funds are in escrow. In other words, if your service provider goes out of business, your money is gone...and your bill may not be paid.

Multiple Checking Accounts

The majority of americans have more than one checking account. Sometimes we have a checking account with a Credit Union where our payroll is direct deposited and we actually earn interest as well as a checking account with the bank near our house we've used for the last 10 years.

For whatever reason, most of us have more than one checking account, especially if we have lots of bills.