This effort will ensure the rapid development of the marketplace. That marketplace could be enormous. Most research indicates a strong consumer preference to work through the banks for payments, primarily because banks are the historic providers of safe, sound and secure financial services. Through BITS, the banking industry is moving aggressively to ensure that the traditional safeguards of privacy, security and effective risk management are in place to protect the public in the new electronic environment. Trillions of dollars a day pass safely and quickly over existing banking infrastructures.
Banks spend billions of dollars each year to update their technology.
The banking industry prides itself on its demonstrated ability to deploy extremely sophisticated technology in a manner that is not only reliable, but is also very easy for customers to use. This new initiative is a powerful example of combining technology and business expertise to serve all customers of financial services. It demonstrates the leadership of BITS and the banking industry in shaping an open and interoperable framework for electronic commerce that has advantages for everyone. It is a cooperative industry effort that will benefit consumers, financial services companies, service providers and information technology companies. BITS has established a Steering Committee of bank representatives to oversee the open bill presentment and payment initiative.