Postal chaos drives businesses to online alternative

The ongoing disputes within the postal industry are driving businesses to reconsider online alternatives. The long-running nature of this dispute, seemingly with no resolution in sight, has made businesses realise how vulnerable they are and they feel they must find a viable alternative. It’s not just an issue of cashflow – they also have to deal with many distressed customers who are understandably concerned about their payments being delayed in the post which could in turn result in penalties.

Electronic billing has been slow to take off in the UK. Many organisations have invested heavily in their own systems to enable consumers to view and pay their bills online. But consumers’ interest has been hampered because they found it too time-consuming to log onto multiple websites. These billing organisations have therefore failed to reap the rewards of their investment. The OneVu solution is designed to complement the investment already made and to use the bank’s online portal as the secure access to bills from multiple organisations, thereby increasing usage of individual electronic billing services and meeting customer demand.

The postal chaos is now a key driver for billers wishing to join the OneVu service along with the fact that an estimated 21 million UK adults today have an online bank account; according to APACs, this is expected to rise to in excess of 26 million by 2011. With this comes an increasing desire from consumers to do more online and independent research shows that consolidated electronic billing is a service that consumers who use online banking want now.

Miles Quitmann, Director, OneVu, October 2007

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