US electronic payments association Nacha is conducting a pilot programme for electronic bill delivery using the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network.
Nacha says the programme, called the Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service (EBIDS), could serve as a model for the electronic distribution of consumer bills to all 20,000 financial institutions that use the ACH Network.
Under the EBIDS model, a billing company would originate a zero-dollar ACH transaction that contains a summary of a consumer's billing information in an attached addenda record, and enter the transaction into the ACH Network through its corporate bank.
The consumer's financial institution would receive the transaction and present the billing information on its online banking site, where the consumer can view the bill and authorise payment. An ACH credit would then be sent back to the biller's corporate bank, along with remittance information.
The programme is sponsored by Nacha's Council for Electronic Billing and Payment (CEBP). Mike Taipale of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and chairman of the CEBP, says: "The EBIDS pilot will test the technical and economic conditions for using the ACH Network as a bill delivery channel, and identify and evaluate the operational requirements necessary for each transaction participant to become 'EBIDS functional'."
Nacha says the new system will benefit consumers by enabling them to pay for bill online via their banking site rather than having to provide payment details at billers' Web sites.
Additionally, billing companies would be able to present more bills electronically through a secure, standards-based network that is linked to thousands of financial institutions.