Turning Digital Bill Presentment Into the Next Consumer Touchpoint

Payments innovation often steals the spotlight from its less flashy cousin, payment advances.

But beneath developments like artificial intelligence and real-time payments, bill presentment has quietly emerged as a critical component of financial institutions’ and billers’ strategies, playing an essential role in enhancing customer experience, streamlining operations and driving revenue growth.

“When you look at what bill presentment can do, it really can help financial institutions, their clients and direct clients be able to collect faster,” Norman Marraccini, senior vice president of products and services at FIS, told PYMNTS.

For years, bill presentment was an afterthought — a static process where customers received a paper invoice or a simple PDF via email. However, as digital transformation has accelerated, so too has the expectation for interactive, real-time and personalized billing experiences.

The dominance of biller-direct models is growing, as 75% of customers prefer to manage and pay their bills in a single location, Marraccini said.

“Making it very user-friendly and beneficial for clients and their customers is key,” he said.

Today, bill presentment is a strategic touch point that can influence customer satisfaction, reduce churn and unlock new business models.

Bill Presentment’s Hidden Key to Payments Innovation

The move toward integrated ecosystems that unify bill pay and biller-direct platforms has significant implications for businesses of all sizes, Marraccini said. Small business owners, for example, can manage invoices, pay bills and track payments all in one place.

“If you can imagine a bank morphing its retail platform to not only include biller-direct but also retail bill payments, you create an ecosystem where businesses can take real-time payments, validate billing accounts and optimize accounts receivable,” he said.

“Think about taking both [retail bill payments and biller-direct] and putting it into one place,” he added. “The opportunities for banks and businesses to interact with customers in new ways increase dramatically.”

By offering a single access point for bill presentment and payment, financial institutions can increase “eyeball time” with customers — a term Marraccini used to describe the importance of maintaining engagement through digital platforms. More engagement can also mean more opportunities to upsell services and provide value-added insights based on customer behavior.

Digital bill presentment platforms also generate vast amounts of valuable data thanks to electronic invoice presentment and payment (EIPP), another innovation shaping the future of bill presentment. By digitizing invoicing and payment processes, EIPP is empowering chief financial officers with deeper financial insights and more efficient receivables management.

“When invoicing and billing are boarded on a digital platform, the majority of business intelligence can be gleaned from customer data,” Marraccini said. “With an EIPP system, you’re blending invoicing, payments and payment history, allowing for greater visibility into customer trends and cash flow management.”

“Data is king,” he added. “With the data we provide back to our clients, institutions can view invoice history, payment trends and cash flow projections in real time … Think about how easy it becomes for businesses and their customers when everything — viewing invoices, making payments, tracking receivables — is available in one centralized portal.”

Solving the Integration Challenge

An advantage of digital bill presentment is its ability to reduce friction in the payment lifecycle.

“You’re looking at an [accounts payable (AP)] department that handles multiple payment receivable systems today,” Marraccini said. “If you can take steps away from that process through automation, it allows for a consolidated view of payments and reduces manual intervention.”

For businesses looking to implement advanced bill presentment solutions, however, integration with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can remain a key challenge.

“Our goal at FIS is to focus on the major ERP systems that handle the majority of invoicing updates for payments and procurement,” Marraccini said. “We tie into those systems via API, ensuring a seamless experience for our partners.”

Ultimately, the success of digital bill presentment hinges on customer experience. Today’s consumers expect seamless, intuitive digital interactions, much like the frictionless experience of eCommerce platforms such as Amazon, he said.

“Paying bills is boring, right?” Marraccini said. “But what can I do to make it interactive for that client? How can I show them information they might not be looking at when they just receive a paper invoice?”

For FIS, the vision is clear, he said.

“The more opportunities we create for our clients to engage with their customers in a one-stop digital portal, the better positioned they will be to drive revenue, improve cash flow and deliver exceptional service,” Marraccini said.

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