Businesses can receive payment from their clients electronically through sending bills to the clients and in turn the client making payment using the internet. Direct payment of bills by clients to organizations can be facilitated using the biller-direct approach. Bank aggregator form of billing involve client and organization facilitating the exchange through a common bank that supervises the transactions between the two parties.
Electronic billing comes as a replacement for traditional billing forms that involved organizations posting bills to their clients and the clients making payment by writing cheques and sending the cheques to the organizations in paper form. Traditional billing involved a lot of paperwork for both organization and the clients but with electronic billing this paperwork has been eliminated and requires only an internet connection, computing devices, and services from institutions that offer electronic billing as a service to facilitate the whole process.
Using electronic billing is time-saving due to the fact that there is no need to hire postage services to deliver bills and cheques to clients and organizations respectively and also the time used in creating these documents has been eliminated. Sending bills and payment through the internet is cheaper than when bills and payment documents were used for this process since there were the charges for delivery of these papers to the relevant recipients. Electronic billing can be done from the comfort of a client’s current location and no need to go around making payments to banks then posting cheques to the banks and this makes it comfortable, convenient and satisfying for the client.
A client can access the electronic billing system around the clock and this makes it better than when using traditional billing where a client could find the institutions like banks and post offices closed when they need their services. Records about the transactions that both parties have been involved in are well kept and easily accessible as opposed to records in traditional billing which could be lost or hard to find.
Choosing a service provider should be based on some important factors like international coverage of the service provider and whether they are in accordance with international standards to make sure you can pay bills to any organization regardless of their location or region. Doing market research on the different charges for services from the different service providers can help in going for the best and fairest service provider. Access to clients information should be regulated and the service providers should make sure they employ measures to keep the client information safe from unauthorized access