Yahoo, which was the first portal to offer online bill payment, in late 1999, does not charge customers for the service, hoping instead to make money from advertising and from luring users to its paid financial services. So Yahoo, which would not disclose how many people use the feature, absorbs the fees charged by Checkfree. Ms. Landry said that she expected most consumers to choose not to view and pay all of their bills at one site, and opt instead to go to each biller's site directly. Others, though, are not ready to give up on the consolidators. But we probably will see mass adoption.
Investors seem to share that optimism.
The billing consolidators and billers are not the only ones waiting for customers to warm to the idea of clicking through their monthly statements. Consider Billserv, which takes a billing company's paper bills and converts them to a form that can be posted on a Web site. BillServ receives 30 to 40 cents for every paper bill it posts on a Web site. But so far, less than 2 percent of its clients' bills are handled this way. But we really would like to see those adoption rates kick in.