• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, October 17, 2002

50 Million Households Can't Be Wrong

Jupiter Research reports that online bill viewing and payment will be among the fastest growing consumer applications over the next three years in a recent release. By 2006, more than 50 million households will view bills online and 52 million households will pay at least one bill online. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 23% over 2001's figure of 18 million U.S. households who viewed at least one bill online.

The Jupiter Research report, "Payments & Transactions: Online Bill Viewing & Payment Forecast, 2001 - 2006," finds that in 2001, consumers viewed 643 million bills online, representing 6% of total U.S. consumer bills. This figure will grow to 3.5 billion bills in 2006, accounting for 32% of all U.S. consumer bills.

Rob Leathern, Jupiter Research Senior Analyst, says "Firms that issue simple bills should discard the notion of attracting consumers to their Web sites for marketing opportunities; instead, they should invest based on the cost savings they will derive from working with bill aggregators and, over time, eliminating paper statements."

Jupiter Research reports that while direct biller sites today account for 83% of bills viewed online, this will fall to 60% by 2006, with 40% of bills viewed at consolidators' sites in 2006. Consumers who are interested in viewing and paying their bills in a single venue say they would prefer to do so at their primary banking provider's site. This tendency increases among more experienced online users...

32% of users who have five or more years of online experience prefer a bank site compared with 23% of users who have been online for a year or less.

Customers who utilize online billing are more satisfied and have a greater affinity for the company's brand. The report also found that online billing customers are more profitable and loyal than traditional consumers.

"Early consumer adopters of online billing are likely already a company's best customers," says Leathern.

Additional highlights:

Merchants with complex bills are still sending paper statements to the majority of their online customers in spite of strong growth in the number of customers viewing bills at their Web sites over the past 18 months.

While 36% of surveyed online consumers view their credit card statement online on a regular basis, only 23% pay it online regularly and many of these consumers do so via their bank's bill payment engine, not at the biller's site.

Less than 6% of online users prefer a portal's aggregated bill viewing and payment offering.

You can find out more here.