As you evaluate a bill presentment provider make sure you have the following available features:

• Ordered Billing: Billers can require that their customers remit payment on a series of bills in a specific order. For example, due dates – the biller can require a customer to pay multiple bills in the order of date due, eliminating bills skipped over.
• Multiple Payments: Customers can make payment on more than one bill at once.
• Customized Billing Rules: A biller can define rules like Pay Entire Amount or Oldest Payment First.
• PDF Invoice: Customize the bill presentment to include a PDF invoice that customers can download for their records.
• Update Bill Definition Files whenever needed via secure FTP.
• Customizable Receipts: Billers can setup automated email delivery of payment receipts using the dashboard notification system as well as print receipt function.
• Customize the Customer search experience: Multiple fields can be employed to make the user experience easy for your customers to locate and pay their bills. The following fields can be used for search fields:
  • Customer ID
  • Customer Name
  • Unique Bill ID
  • Bill Number
  • Address
    • The above fields can be labeled to better match a billers nomenclature. For example, Invoice Number might be a better label than Bill Number.
  • Any of the additional four biller definable fields.
• Unique Deposit and Funding Reconciliation reporting.

The Bill Presentment and Payment system can be used with and existing merchant account. If you do not have an existing credit card merchant account, one can be provided. To use the system with eChecks, we must provide that portion of the processing account.

The Bill Presentment and Pay solution from Agile Payments utilizes a csv template for the purpose of populating the customer data in order for them to locate and remit payments for all outstanding invoices related to their account. Partial payments can be accommodated via a specific csv file template. Billing companies simply provide a menu item and url on their website which directs their customers to the hosted Bill Presentment and Payment site. Billing organizations have their choice as to what searchable fields are available. In some cases a billing company might only want to make available account number for locating an invoice. In other cases a billing company might want to make available name search, phone, email or more.

Aside from the benefits of reducing invoice delivery costs and customer service time spent on payments related phone calls, an EBPP system can present marketing and sales messaging in a more effective manor than paper invoices could ever hope to do. 

Engage your customers with interactive marketing messages and videos that can't be done with traditional paper invoice delivery.

Depending on the Electronic Invoicing that the prospective client is interested in, data population can come from one of two different options:

• API Integration: This method of data population is available for a few of our EBPP solutions. This would require that the interested client be capable of supplying us with an API that we can code to the EBPP system. Integrating in this fashion provides and always up to date EBPP system for customer information such as amount due, date due and amount overdue which can trigger reminders or outbound IVR calls.
• Spreadsheet file upload: This method becomes popular for organizations who don't have staff technical resources or an API available for integration. In this instance a csv file is uploaded to a secure cloud storage utility that communicates with the EBPP system through the cloud storage's API integration. The only real drawback is that the csv file must be replaced periodically, e.g., once a month.

No matter which option is adopted, an EBPP system that allows self-service for customers to locate and pay their invoice, 24/7/365 can significantly reduce their customer service workload - and the need to send out invoices, whether it be electronically or traditionally.

There are many available options for reporting of transaction originations, status, rejected items, settlements, deposits and future transactions:

• Automated email delivery of daily originations and rejected transactions.
• Reporting via a Virtual Terminal can be accessed by any member of the merchant organization who has been granted access and reporting permissions. Summary and detailed reports are downloadable in a number of formats:
  • XML
  • CSV
  • Web archive
  • XLS
  • Tiff
  • Docx
• API: Organizations having development capabilities can opt to integrate their operational software for receiving reporting data, including using webhooks for near realtime transactional status. Both SOAP and RESTful API’s are available for reporting integration of the Bill Presentment solution.

Integrating Webhooks: For customers that have technical resources, Webhooks can be utilized to completely automate transaction status updates.

Many businesses have a goal of reducing the cost of receivable payment acceptance. Providing a Bill Presentment and Payment solution is a good step in doing so. This solution can be implemented with absolutely no development programming. It just makes sense to provide as many technology channels as possible for merchant customers to locate and pay their invoices with zero involvement from the merchant organization’s customer service team. Moreover, customers get irritated if they call and have to wait for a customer service representative in order to make a payment. Happier customers lead to better retention.

In terms of security, the BillFind+Pay solution resides on a PCI level 1 certified platform. And let’s not forget the inherent risks with live customer service agents taking sensitive credit card or checking account data over the phone. Potential disgruntled employees are removed from the risk factor in handling credit card are ACH payments data.

All companies seek to satisfy their customers. Technology has brought great abilities to present  billing statements and methods to accept the associated payments. There are few companies who have yet to embrace these new payment acceptance technologies that have recently come about. Let’s get your organization on-board with some new tech – a Bill Presentment and Payment solution.

Contact us to discuss what Agile Payments can do for your organization for Bill Presentment and Invoice lookup. Agile Payments has been supplying organizations with payments related tools for 18+ years. As a  bill presentment provider we can help your business become more efficient and profitable.