When competitors are only a click away, the electronic bill will provide a unique opportunity for service providers to increase the frequency and quality of contact to create a stronger customer bond. Information personalized to each customer will be the foundation of a mutually beneficial relationship and will become the new competitive opportunity for service providers. With such a wealth of opportunities waiting, it is no surprise that telcos are eager to take advantage of Internet billing. An increasing number of companies look toward open standards for the answer. The benefits of a widely accepted standard for distributing bills and handling payment are clear.
Open standards enable rapid parallel development of Internet billing solutions by multiple parties.
A single, shared standard also will create more choices, lower prices and generally lead to a broad base of technical talent and widely available development tools. The most important benefit of open standards is interoperability between billers, biller service providers and customer service providers. A single standard will allow companies to communicate quickly and easily with one another without being hindered by supporting multiple proprietary approaches. Since billers will be able to work with multiple distribution channels, consumers will have the flexibility to view and pay their bills where it is most convenient for them. According to most analysts, the convenience and choice created by interoperability is key to mainstream consumer adoption of Internet billing.