That is the statement made in this Forbes article.
Only 22% of Americans pay their bills online through their bank, .... Banks drool over such customers since they can be 50% more profitable than those who pay bills by mail.
Forbes Mag writeup, see the sixth paragraph. On the surface, I'll believe it. But I'm curious about the details.
Let's say a customer goes to a bank's website and initiates his/her bill payments from the web interface. This is the drool/50% more profitable factor the article is discussing, I presume.
What about the alternate means to do online bill pay, where the payment is initiated from non-browser client applications like MS Money (before it goes dark in 1/1/2011), Quicken, and other recent PFM upstarts? Realizing their is additional cost to the bank, above and beyond the web UI, (for infrastructure, 3rd party software, support, etc.), is this portal to bill payment still as profitable? ... and do banks drool over these customers?
I'm prompted to ask in the the context of some banks I've seen change ownership (Bank A buys Bank B, the territory/locations not bought by A become Bank C) and newly re-named Bank C continues to offer browser initiated bill payment, but discontinues the Quicken/Money/OFX transaction based bill payment initiation.