Effective Monday, Chase Bank will end its four-year experiment with so-called scan-and-pay bill payment (download the email announcement below). Popularized in 1999-2000 by Cyberbills, PayMyBills.com, and PayTrust, the service allowed users to have their mailed bills redirected to the service provider where they were scanned and posted to a website. Users were alerted to the new bills and could pay them through a variety of methods.
As demand failed to materialize, the three service providers all ended up under Metavante ownership. Last year, Metavante sold the remaining PayTrust business to Intuit. Chase was the only major bank to offer the service, using it as the premium option in a three-level product line (see OBR 82, p. 8).
Analysis
This is a service that sounds great on paper, but is too complicated for the benefits provided. Winning electronic bill payment services need to provide quick payback with a minimal learning curve. That's what so nice about CheckFree's new system that allows users to add a new biller by simply entering the biller's phone number.
While the few users who took the trouble to redirect their bills and set-up automated payments were quite satisfied, it was just too much trouble for all but a fringe group of highly-organized computer-savvy types, the kind of person who is a long-term user of Quicken. So it makes a lot of sense that the sole remaining provider of the service is Intuit.
—JB