Bill.com ePayments enable payment from any US bank account by leveraging the Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network, a highly reliable and secure nationwide electronic funds transfer system. Bill.com ePayments are available now to all Bill.com users.

Businesses paying bills electronically using ePayments benefit from lower overall payment costs, better payment-timing predictability, better cash management and greater bill payment efficiency. Vendors getting paid via ePayments benefit from faster access to funds, reduced collections and remittance processing costs, reduced merchant fees for accepting credit card payments, and fewer trips to the bank to deposit checks.

Unlike consumers who pay the majority of bills electronically through their bank's online bill payment services, SMBs have until now had surprisingly few options to pay vendors electronically. Bank-based online bill payment services typically let businesses pay only the largest consumer-focused vendors (e.g. financial institutions, utilities, government agencies, etc.) electronically. Yet, payments to other vendors, including individuals and other SMBs, represent the majority of SMB transactions -- the average Bill.com SMB user pays only 16% of bills to large consumer-oriented vendors. Furthermore, bank bill payment systems require a SMB to manage separate banking and accounting systems, leading to extra work and additional costs. The end result is that most SMB bill payment is done the old fashioned way, via paper checks.

"Everyone knows online bill payment is easier, less expensive, and more predictable than paper checks but until now there hasn't been a good solution for SMBs," said Rene Lacerte, CEO at Bill.com. "Bill.com ePayments is the first solution to allow SMBs to pay anyone electronically without having to wrestle with multiple banking and accounting systems, and without the limitations of a typical consumer-oriented electronic vendor directory. Everyone wins because vendors get paid faster and more affordably."

Bill.com ePayments

Using ePayments is simple. SMBs simply match their vendors to a directory of 4,000-plus billers in the Bill.com network, or securely and privately add bank account and routing information for vendors or individuals not already in the network.

Once a vendor is in the Bill.com network, SMBs can execute ePayments quickly and easily from within the Bill.com application by simply scheduling a payment to that vendor. The payment process is seamlessly integrated with Bill.com's paperless bill management and automatically synchronizes with accounting systems such as QuickBooks or Intacct, so SMBs do not have to manage information and processes in disparate systems or grapple with differences in how these accounting systems interact with offerings from various banks.

Beyond cost savings and convenience, ePayments help the environment, too. According to Payitgreen.org, a company that pays even 20 bills each month electronically versus with checks will save 7.5 lbs. of paper, 71 gallons of water, 9.6 gallons of gasoline and 297 lbs. of greenhouse gases annually.

Customers and Partners React

"Bill.com has taken the guesswork out of bill management and payment, and ePayments are a huge step forward in making it easier for me and my vendors to get paid," said Jeremy Pyles, co-founder of lighting and home furnishings company Niche Modern. "In one far-reaching step, Bill.com has replaced our previous approach of cobbled together processes and systems which were incomplete and inefficient. By marrying the disparate islands of accounting and banking in an elegant solution, Bill.com allows me to manage cash flow, pay vendors, and receive payments in one place, all from a web browser. The best part is that I'm no longer tied to my physical network, staring at the accounting system or worrying that the transactions I assigned to my team are being processed the right way. More work is now completed in less time, leaving me more time to creatively run my company."

"We use Bill.com with our customers and our vendors, so by adding the ePayments feature, Bill.com has really helped us streamline our processes," said Doug Sleeter, President and CEO, The Sleeter Group. "By setting up ePayments with our vendors, we can ensure our payments are never late. By setting up ePayments with our customers who use Bill.com, we get paid much faster and we no longer have to take paper checks to the bank -- we simply get an email when money is deposited in our account."