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#1205668 - 06/23/09 04:08 AM Banks drool over online bill pay customers?
Milburn Drysdale Offline
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Milburn Drysdale
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 15
Southeastern PA
That is the statement made in this Forbes article.

Quote:
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.

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#1208313 - 06/26/09 01:54 PM Re: Banks drool over online bill pay customers? Milburn Drysdale
Milburn Drysdale Offline
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Milburn Drysdale
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 15
Southeastern PA
No one bites on this?

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#1209044 - 06/26/09 10:35 PM Re: Banks drool over online bill pay customers? Milburn Drysdale
Andy_Z Offline
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Andy_Z
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All I get is a header banner on the link.

The question would be, are those "remore" bill pays included? I'm not sure what makes them more profitable. I'd certainly say when you are married to a bank with internet banking and bill pay, you are much more likely to stay with that bank.

My experience is that more folks use browser based bill pay, but I could be wrong.
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#1209081 - 06/27/09 02:21 AM Re: Banks drool over online bill pay customers? Andy_Z
Milburn Drysdale Offline
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Milburn Drysdale
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 15
Southeastern PA

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