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We don't need a wide network of generic e-invoicing portals, we just need to use secure e-mail with embedded poayment options.

Why email is the strongest medium for online billing

Email usage continues to increase globally. Although growth rates vary from region to region, this increase goes hand in hand with the increased use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Nielsen published a study which found that consumers of social media were also the highest consumers of email

Billing portals continue to deliver poor ROI

Web portals can provide a customer with a wealth of information that enables online analysis of billing, payment, historical information such as previous month's bills and self service options. The fundamental problem with accessing this kind of information online is the initial registration process required, along with the need to enter a username and password each time you visit the portal, one or two portals seem manageable, but once you translate all of your monthly bills to portals you end up with a large amount of URL's, usernames, passwords and navigations on each site to wade through - not to mention remembering to view these bills each month. This is one of the compelling reasons why companies do not achieve a ROI when trying to convert paper based customers to portal registrants.

Email delivery drives faster payment

How can this process be simplified, yet still provide value for the customer and how can the supplier drive faster payments and improve cash flow?

Emailing an interactive eBill attachment to a customer and enabling them to view, sort, analyze, query and submit payment from within a secure email attachment is the most simple aand most appreciated option. All required action can be performed from within the bill, thereby retaining the customers attention and making the call to action i.e. payment, available in one click.

Supporters of portal billing argue that the majority of email sent to inboxes is spam yet they email bill notifications to their users. Recently Symantec released statistics indicating that 92% of email is spam. However spam filters are catching 90% of this leaving very little in the inbox. As inboxes become more intelligent, as in the case of Gmail's priority inbox, spam email communications are now being pushed to the bottom of the queue. Furthermore, ISP's are continually improving their criteria regulating what mail is allowed to land in the consumer's inbox, before the inbox even starts it's intelligent (algorithm driven) work.

Increase email reach through social media

Interactivity on marketing communications has continued to increase with the introduction of social media sharing options on these emails. GetResponse's E-mail marketing and social media integration report suggests that this is a worthwhile tactic for increasing email reach. The study of 500 million emails showed that including three or more social sharing icons increased average click-through rates from 7.2 per cent to 11.2 per cent.

With thanks to Unisys partner Striata

"Positive Pay" is indeed one of the methods to detect cheque counterfeiting but there are many more like detection of copied images of cheques and/or the  copy of signatures, reduction of the "fraud window" by branch capture and centralised processing which allows for early detection, use of user profiles, various checks on cheque numbers, dates etc in the processing of cheques both at the beneficiary as paying bank end. Various other methods could be used as watermark, electronic signatures on images, special paper etc.

A holistic view on fraud with (paper based) payment instruments is required to really combat fraud.

Rein Geerdes, Business Development Manager Payments at Unisys