Dozens of companies are providing software and services for online billing. In addition, there has been considerable activity in mergers and acquisitions. The most notable moves have been made by payment-processing market leader CheckFree, which acquired chief rival TransPoint, purchased software vendor BlueGill Technologies and formed a strategic alliance with Bank of America in which the bank acquired 16 percent of CheckFree's stock. For your customers, you will need to support multiple payment options, which might include credit cards, electronic checks, automatic balance transfers and debit cards. Electronic fund transfers are the most prevalent transactions in the B2B world, but some business customers prefer to pay by other means.
Payment processing is made even more complicated by the number of parties that can be involved.
If you're a biller, this means the payment service you choose must be able to integrate with the many channels that may be involved in processing your payments. No matter which service provider you choose, some level of integration or customization will be required for you to be able to accept batch-payment data transfers from external parties. Another key concern is security. Be sure to choose a vendor with a sound approach for encrypting its data transfers. Related to this is the data-center infrastructure the payment provider offers.