Mastercard is working on a new technology platform to support bill payments via mobile banking apps, created to help banks recover ground lost to multiple direct billing sites.
The card scheme says the new real-time service, dubbed Bill Pay Exchange, will make it easier for consumers to view, manage and pay telecom, utility, rent, credit card, mortgage and other personal bills without having to set up accounts with different billers or remember multiple passwords and dates for payments each month.
According to a recent report from Aite, biller-direct sites currently account for 73% of US online bill payments, with the bank share shrinking from 38% in 2010 to 27% in 2018.
Bill Pay Exchange will enable consumers to use their mobile banking app to set up all billers, receive notifications when a bill is due, see bill details, and manage multiple bills in one place including specifying when and how much to pay. Payments out of accounts will be cleared instantly thanks to a link to The Clearing House’s (TCH’S) real-time payments infrastructure.
The scheme will connect to MasterCard’s network of 135,000 US billers and will be supported by multiple third party vendors, including FIS, ACI Worldwide, Aliaswire, Inlet and Transactis.
Product integration and testing of Bill Pay Exchange with partners will begin in 2019, says Mastercard, with commercial availability slated for later in the year.
