Paying bills is painful. What can banks do to ease the pain?

Only 40% of online banking users use their bank’s bill pay functionality, which is famously one of the “stickiest” features for retaining customers. Fiserv and Allied Payment Network offer two innovative approaches to help users get started paying bills digitally with their bank.

Gamification
Fiserv recently released a new version of its CheckFree RXP bill payment service that incorporates gamification to make bill payment “more intuitive and engaging for customers,” according to a press release.

There are three primary gamification elements in Fiserv’s new product:

1. A progress bar, familiar to online survey-takers, indicating stages of getting started with bill pay
2. Tutorial elements to help users input data into fields
3. Advanced features that are “locked” until certain tasks are completed

These are classic gamification elements that are “gamelike” in form, not content. They can provide a sense of accomplishment to a user completing the required tasks, when done well. Fiserv says that its preliminary results indicate gamification is increasing the number of billers added to the service after signing up with the service, as well as scheduling bills to pay.

PicturePay
Another strategy to make paying bills enjoyable employs the smartphone camera. The most prominent bank employing this is Minneapolis, Minn.-based US Bank, but smaller banks tend to use packaged solutions such as PicturePay from Allied Payment Network. This service, resold by mobile banking provider Malauzai and others, allows users to snap a picture of a bill and import the data from the bill into the bill pay application. PicturePay launched in November 2012. In January 2013, First Financial Bancshares of Abilene, Texas, was the first bank to put it to use, and launched a memorable ad campaign, one of which can be seen below, highlighting its advantages.

Ralph Marcuccilli, Allied’s CEO, told Bank Innovation the company is now seeing 5% to 15% month-over-month growth in its users as more banks sign up for the service. He made a surprising claim as well: “Customers pay 10 to 15 bills a month and deposit maybe one or two checks. The value of mobile bill pay [to banks] will overcome RDC [remote deposit capture] in the long term.”

Further, Marcuccilli said there has been “not one incidence of fraud” with PicturePay. Fraud with PicturePay, of course, would mean someone took your bill and paid it for you.

Paying bills is painful, but digital banking is making it easier than ever. And once users get started using bill pay, they’re hooked. The problem is getting them to that starting line.

Learn more about what’s next in banking at Bank Innovation 2014 on March 3-4 in Seattle. Request an invitation here.