A quick glance into BPAY?s 10-year history instantly reveals how much the payments landscape continues to be transformed.

Driven by consumer demand, BPAY has grown from 37 billers on launch date to more than 15,000 different biller codes today. From recurring household bills to one-off payments, such as holidays, tax debt and voluntary super contributions, BPAY has become Australia?s most popular payment method.

So much so, that the most recent Usage & Attitudes study conducted by global marketing research firm TNS, illustrates that consumer awareness of BPAY has reached 97 per cent.

Not surprisingly, 70 per cent of Australian bill payers have used BPAY in the past 12 months, compared to one per cent who paid a bill via the Internet in 1997.

Other significant BPAY statistics:

Since 2002, BPAY has commissioned TNS, a global market research firm, to undertake its annual Consumer Usage & Attitudes Study. One objective of this extensive study is to identify consumer trends within the bill payment landscape, including how consumers manage their bill payment obligations and their perceptions around BPAY and BPAY View.

With both quantitative and qualitative findings, this comprehensive snapshot of bill payment habits is a critical component in evaluating the brand?s performance on an ongoing basis.

In 2007, virtually all survey participants (97%) had heard of BPAY.

And not only had brand awareness reached saturation point, but consumers expressed their confidence and trust in the brand. Consumers consistently ranked security, convenience and ease as the most influential factors to shape their bill payment choices ? and based on these features, BPAY outperformed all other payment methods.

The survey reported that BPAY had the largest share of bills, accounting for 36 per cent of bill payments made in the last month. The findings also indicated that BPAY payments tend to ensure timely bill remittance, with 94 per cent of BPAY users surveyed citing they pay a bill on or before the due date.

In terms of bill payment methods, increasingly consumers are moving to electronic options. This corresponds with a decline in telephone, in-person and mail payments ? a steady trend that remains unchanged since the study began.

The shift to electronic commerce is now moving beyond bill payment into the area of bill presentment ? the realm of BPAY View. Of those surveyed, 35 per cent were aware of BPAY View and 40 per cent indicated that they would consider using the service.

The primary incentive for people to use BPAY View was around the availability of more bills, a challenge BPAY is set to overcome this year with a number of new billers set to join the service, particularly from the utilities sector.

Consumers reported their bill preference for e-presentment, with recurring household bills at the top of the list.

BPAY Billers who would like more information on the 2007 Usage & Attitudes Study should contact the BPAY office.

BPAY View ? BPAY?s electronic bill presentment service ? was launched in 2002 with four billers signed up to the service and 91,000 bills presented to 36,000 customers in its first year of operation.

The number of bills presented has now increased into the millions, a number that will grow exponentially with the recent influx of energy companies joining this e-billing option.

Energy companies, including Alinta, Horizon Power, Truenergy, Synergy, Energy Australia, Ergon Energy, Integral Energy and soon Origin Energy and AGL make up 25 per cent of the service?s biller codes. In fact by June 2008, the majority of the larger energy companies in Australia will be part of the service, which means that millions of consumers are able to receive their bill online through BPAY View, regardless of where they live or the energy company they use.

Consumers have already demonstrated their interest in receiving their bills on-line, with a 21 per cent increase in energy bills presented to consumers via BPAY View over the past six months. This figure equates to approximately 12,000 energy company bills per month presented through this service.

Predictably, companies that prefer to receive BPAY payments, because of the cost-savings related to simpler back-end reconciliation, see a marked increase in these payments when they present the bill electronically.

Typically, an electronic payment follows an electronic payment request. For instance, the number of BPAY payments made to energy companies that are BPAY View billers has increased by 15 per cent over 12 months.

In addition to energy companies, some of the country?s most popular telecommunications providers, such as 3 Australia, Optus, Primus and Telstra are also BPAY View billers.

According to research, consumers are more likely to sign up to BPAY View if they can receive a wider variety of bills.

For more information on becoming a BPAY View biller, please contact your Account Manager or visit www.bpay.com.au.

According to Planet Ark, in 2006, 92 per cent of Australian households recycled or re-used paper - up from 55 per cent 15 years ago. Despite this impressive adoption rate, Australians consume approximately 200 kilograms of paper products per person annually and 70kgs of printing and writing paper ? approximately 70 per cent of which is imported. Clearly this will have a significant impact upon our environment.

Although we know that BPAY View has biller and consumer benefits beyond cost savings, the environment advantages have been difficult to credibly quantify.

To better understand in practical environmental terms what it means for a biller and customer to sign up for BPAY View, we have partnered with Planet Ark, which has reviewed the resources consumed and emissions associated with paper production.

Initial findings from their study tell us that last year, BPAY View presented the equivalent of 6 million pages of bills, which would have been enclosed in four million envelopes. BPAY View billers and users helped save 50 tonnes of paper and 1.35 million litres of water, while reducing greenhouse emissions by 80 tonnes.

To give these figures context, consider that in one year BPAY View saved:

• 1, 045 trees
• Approximately 21 Olympic sized swimming pools of water
• The energy equivalent of 17 homes
• 1 garbage truck of solid waste for landfill

In the coming months, we will begin collaborating with interested billers to explore the significant enviromental savings that the incremental growth in BPAY View registrations can have on a business? green credentials.

For more information on our activities with Planet Ark, please contact the BPAY office.

BPAY was set up 10 years ago to provide customers with a convenient and secure way to pay their bills and to create a more efficient collection service for billers and financial institutions.

This regular ?Inside BPAY? section has been created to ensure that businesses understand just how efficient the service can be. Every quarter, we will highlight one aspect of the Scheme - its functionality, technicality and capability - and its biller benefits. Our inaugural article will focus on the topic of check digits.

What is a check digit?
A check digit is a digit at the end of the Customer Reference Number (CRN) that is used to ensure that the Customer Reference Number is entered correctly by the customer paying a bill via BPAY.

How is a check digit assigned?
The check digit is determined by using a calculation on the reference number to produce a number that is added to the end of the CRN.

What are the benefits?

1. When a customer pays a bill by EFT or credit card, the biller must use whatever reference number accompanies the payment to try to reconcile the payment against their Debtors Ledger to determine which customers have paid and that the correct amount was paid.

2. If the biller cannot determine who has paid which bill, then the payment cannot be applied to a customer account. This means that the biller must then keep the unallocated funds in a suspense account until the customer who made the payment can be identified. This can impact cash flow, particularly when hundreds of thousands of dollars are in a suspense account that the biller cannot utilise.

3. With BPAY, the check digit is one mechanism that ensures that the CRN is entered correctly every single time a payment is made. Therefore, the process of checking payments can be fully automated, which means the biller takes less time to allocate payments and avoids the issues of unallocated payments in suspense accounts.

4. BPAY delivers cleared funds overnight, improving cash flow. With BPAY payments there are no chargebacks, so payers can not use the payment as a dispute mechanism. Payments received are cleared funds to the Biller, as the payments are irrevocable.

B_Informed was launched six years ago as a forum in which we inform our key stakeholders on BPAY activities and developments.

To ensure that we are effective, we encourage you to use your e-voice to share your opinions and ideas for B_Informed. You won?t be wasting your time ? the e-version of this newsletter is a direct result of member feedback! To complete our survey click here.