EBIDS Opens Up Additional Revenue Streams for Small Banks

NACHA--The Electronic Payments Association today announced that Dollar Bank customers can now receive ebills and make corresponding bill payments on the bank's web site using EBIDS. EBIDS (Electronic Billing Information Delivery Service) is an Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network solution to increase the availability of electronic bills to consumers.

"We believe EBIDS can open up new markets for regional and community banks, leveraging the ACH Network and lifting adoption rates for electronic bill presentment and payment across the board," said Jeff Morrow, executive vice president of Dollar Bank. "Until now, such banks have not had a cost-effective way to present electronic bills to customers. Leveraging the existing infrastructures of the ACH Network and online banking makes bill presentment cost-effective."

EBIDS allows businesses to use the ACH Network to deliver electronic bills to consumer online banking accounts for presentment to consumers and to receive authorized credit payments. The banks that present the bills to consumers receive a fee for each bill presented. "This makes online bill presentment a revenue source rather than a cost burden for consumer banks," said Morrow. "EBIDS is a major enhancement in the business model for electronic bill presentment."

"EBIDS is a solution that helps to make ebilling available to everyone," said Rob Unger, senior director of ebilling and payments for NACHA. "NACHA ACH formats and rules will enable banks, billers, and ebilling providers to standardize Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) transactions."

Dollar Bank has already started presenting Verizon ebills to a select group of customers who regularly pay Verizon from the bank's online banking site.

EBIDS is a NACHA pilot designed to demonstrate the technical feasibility and market viability of using the ACH Network to conduct EBPP transactions. Additional information about EBIDS can be found at www.nacha.org/EBIDS.